Should have just called it something fancy, like the ‘Royale’.
they should have just called it something idiotic like Big Quarter Pounder.
Because of the metric system?
Troll gave it away by calling them “signs”
Welcome Ken M energy
wouldn’t surprise me
Well, the 1/3 also had to compete with the double-quarter (aka, half pound, but two patties), which is bigger and feels significantly more substantial as well.
It doesn’t help that any place I saw selling them (let’s be real here, this is about McD’s) was offering an expensive and fancy 1/3rd burger (deluxe bacon, southwest ranch style, Asian sensation with real gold flake, etc) against the old reliable (cheap) quarter-pounder. Perceived value is everything.
Also, we’re bad at math, lol
A&W had a 1/3lb burger that was cheaper than McDonald’s quarter pounder. Nothing fancy about it, just people are bad at math.
A&W was such a cool thing before McDonald’s and the other franchises killed them off.
Its still around in some places, independent franchises.
I keep seeing people talking as if they didn’t exist anymore but they still have about 600 restaurants in the US and 400 elsewhere (not counting the Canadian version which is independent and doing very well as far as I know and actually has more locations than the US chain)
There used to be one near me and there isn’t anymore. I really miss the root beer that was on tap there, something they did to it at the restaurant made it special (possibly a different syrup or the way they mixed it).
I only see them as partnerships with other places like KFC. In my childhood there was a bunch of them. I liked them best.
Canadian here.
Canadian A&W is super good and iirc (which I probably don’t) they never had anything to do with the American chain
They were split in 72 but A&W is over 100 years old so they were under the same umbrella for most of their history.
Things get crazy when you realize how long ago 1972 was.
First restaurant founded in 1923. 1972-1923 = 49 years. 2024-1972 = 52 years.
Sources say they were not, in fact, under the same umbrella for most of their history.
There’s one like a mile from me, but I never go because they suck. Oh, and KFC sucks as well, yet they decided to co-brand with them.
I liked it as a kid, but I tried them a few years ago and they are awful. I much prefer Carl’s Jr and even Wendy’s.
They’re still around in some parts of the country, but quality is not nearly what it was.
Except it’s not true. That was just the excuse A&W made when going bankrupt. No one else had problems selling 1/3lb burgers in the US.
Wasn’t this proven false long ago? Snopes says it’s true. 🤷
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/
Yeah, I would think so. No other restaurant had problems selling 1/3lb burgers. Braums and Carls Jr sling them by the truckload. Almost all the small family restaurants here sell their burgers by 1/3lb 2/3lb sizes. And I don’t exactly live in an area known for it’s high intelligence. So I’m calling shenanigans.
By now it’s already been a meme for a while. That’s how these people learned that the ⅓ was bigger than the ¼.
Nah, if you look in any American kitchen, you’ll find 1/3 cup and 1/4 cup measuring cups. They may not use them, but everyone has them, and it’s painfully obvious that the 1/4 nests inside the 1/3, therefore the 1/3 is bigger. If you want to make mac 'n cheese, you use the 1/4 for the milk, which means you’ll take it out of the 1/3 cup.
Americans are so bad at measurements that graduation marks don’t work for them.
They need an individual container for each common measurement.
It’s absurd.
Lol.
But yes, we do have graduation marks like this one, which would also clearly label the 1/4 cup and 1/3 cup parts. Whichever one you have, it’s pretty intuitive that
1/3 > 1/4. I prefer the separate ones since they take up less space so they can go in a drawer instead of the cupboard (and I have 2-3 of each size), but to each their own.
Every record that I can find says Carls Jr debut their 1/3 lb thickburger in 2002 and Braum’s was founded in the 1980s.
So they were absolutely NOT contemporaries of A&W when they were marketing their 1/3 lb burgers.
I’m not really sure what people like you get from coming here and lying on the internet, but I am so fuckdamn tired of it.
Username checks out.
Edit: the claim in the OP is “1/3lb burger failed in america” nothing to do with the 80’s. Lots of places still sell 1/3lb burgers 40 years later.
Then they aren’t contemporaries of the time when A&W debut their 1/3 burger NOW ARE THEY?!
I’m not really sure what you and the above asshat’s motivation is, do you think that somehow your intellectual dishonesty will make people think Americans are less stupid on average?
Frankly I don’t even care and I am so fuckdamn tired of your kind.
Please take a step back. You’re getting worked up about a hamburger debate on the Internet.
No I am getting worked up about two people spewing provably wrong bullshit, misleading the entire thread, and getting tons of traction because of it.
We are now reddit 2016 and it’s only getting worse by the hour.
Video games also failed in America. Some even thought it would never come back into prominence, and I don’t recall if it’s related but the writer of the Wticher books sold rights for the game in hard cash and not percentage of profit because he thought they’d never make money as a video game.
Failed and such doesn’t mean forever. Things can change or changes in advertising/quality control can restore dead markets. Now maybe this means as you said it wasn’t American stupidity, but were also talking Americans who supported segregation at one time and by majority now do not. As different people grow up or even if people heard about this and learned to be less dumb, the conditions in which the original failure could have changed, making the statement true at the time.
the claim in the OP is "1/3lb burger failed in america
It did, in the 80s, when A&W tried to sell them. I live a 30m drive from the original A&W, they have newspapers up from that time with the people bitching about it. It’s a popular “fun fact” style story and has been since it happened
The practice wasnt successful until the early 2000s, a little after it had become a fun fact that became more and more widely known. I think I even remember seeing an ad for Carl’s Jr that played on the fact that A&W had failed where they were succeeding and made some joke about dumb older generations or whatever to appeal to the youth
Is A&W a good source on why their huge marketing stunt failed?
It was in newspapers, you can literally search it and read scans of it right now.
Even in the 70s there were people who marveled at how stupid the angry idiots who thought 1/3 was less than 1/4 and you can go back and read those articles and see their own words.
Ooh, I wanna read these.
I am having trouble finding scans, though. Do you have any links?
There is already at least one in the thread and I’m not doing free work for you today.
Do you mean… the snopes article?
Okay.
It was literally reported in newspapers at the time, angry people posting in the opinions section about how A&W was ‘ripping people off’
And no other existing fast food chain at the time marketed a 1/3 burger.
Source: I am fucking old.
Now can you explain to me why so many people assume your bullshit to be right?
for some reason people love to revisit things like this and find post hoc justifications for dumb fucks to make them look smarter. it happens a lot with elon and TFG too.
but the one timeless example that pisses me off the most is W’s “fool me once” flub. every time it’s mentioned, so many people come to his defense, adamant that it was on purpose! supposedly he didn’t want to have a clip of him saying “shame on me” on camera to be used against him in political ads and whatnot. not like we have tons of evidence that he was a fuckwit before that, and never mind that there’s absolutely no evidence for this to be so propagated like it’s a fact…
but this is such bs on so many levels that I’m getting angry even right now thinking about it. wow! such marvelous political instincts… he sure didn’t end up giving a much worse soudbite that made him look like an absolute buffoon now, did he? what a savant!
no, people can be stupid. but also the american public in general? come on… there’s areas in which you can try to save your national pride, math ain’t one of them.
Yup, A&W sucked because their food sucks. They were great when I was a kid (I loved their frosted rootbeer mugs and onion rings), but they started cutting costs or something because I never went back after the early 2000s or so.
I blame it on this stunt where they merged KFC and A&W, both of which suck.
Huh, I heard the story as burger king
Higher number = growth and better!
Infinite burgers = infinite growth!
(waist) line must go up!
1/3 pounder? More like turd pounder :)
Aggressive/obnoxious question mark usage in the form of textual “vocal fry” gang stay losing.
Also a single quarter pound patty plus fries is already enough food. Perhaps too much.
deleted by creator
Depends on the person and their lifestyle. It’s too much food for a 130 pound couch potato. It’s not nearly enough food for a 200 pound bodybuilder, or rock climber.
An actual rock climber did this. He averaged about 16 regular McDonald’s burger patties over 3 months
On average. We all know McDonald’s isn’t exactly catering to bodybuilders.
Speak for yourself cuck. My day starts with a 4:00 AM trip to McD’s to get my body in prime condition for the gym. I’m lifting plates in both locales before you’ve regained consciousness and realized whatever you were dreaming about is going to be the best part of your day.
/s obviously but just in case
If I haven’t torn a tendon before noon, I’m killing myself.
I might as well hurry up and get my ass to hell if I’m about to start living such a chickenshit bitch life.
Try to compete with McDonald’s marketing on their brand new 1/4 pounder
Get absolutely destroyed when piggy-backing their marketing strategy fails
Blame the customer for not understanding fractions
Why has no one introduced a 1/8th pounder and charged more for it?
Because at that point the size difference would be clearly visible.
Also many fast food places have, and they’re called sliders.
Wait no, they should do that. The eighth burger would be a success (although to be fair the 1/3 Burger was decades ago so maybe times have changed)
It’s literally what happened…
why the fuck are you greentexting it sarcastically
and
who the hell are the 18 other people that thought you were making sense?
who the hell are the 18 other people that thought you were making sense?
The same kinda people who would have assumed the 1/4 pounder was bigger 30 years ago
fuck you’re right, should have realized that…
Pay attention to your kids’ education folks
I used to work on a deli. Someone ordered an eighth pound of meat (which is like nothing and nobody ever did this). My coworker asked me if that meant .8 on the scale.
That’s ~50g. I wouldn’t think of ordering less than 100g of anything at a deli
(At least people in metric countries hardly need fractions)
Yeah it was a comically tiny amount of meat.
It depends on how much they’re paying you
That was another point of frustration. People would think if they asked for a half pound and the scale reads .6 they get a deal, but in reality it’s just printing a label that says my pounds and they gotta pay accordingly. Some customers would accuse you of ripping them off if they asked for a specific amount and got that amount exactly.
This is hilarious, I never considered people would actually think like that.
Why would they think you’re weighing it? To see if your judgement of the weight is accurate?
Beats me. It’s not like we were taking money at the deli counter either. Also the labels say how much weight there is, price per pound, and the total price. Just like meat from the meat department would. But I guess because they’re asking for it in person they think it works differently.
The American education system (for my old millennial ass)
“Memorize this. No I will not explain how it works or why. Memorize it take the test and leave me alone.”
Me who is physically incapable of memorizing seemingly arbitrary stuff and needs to understand for it to stick: I guess fuck me then huh? 1/4 pounder it is!
Sounds like you were in the “regular” class. I went to the smart kid class, and they did a much better job of explaining stuff.
Yeah I definitely was. Our regular class of 30 kids in one classroom, one graduation class of 900… The goddamn school was a city of 2,000 kids… Of all those kids, and therefore all those parents paying taxes, we somehow couldn’t afford paper one year. Of my class of 900, 400 graduated. That should tell you something about the shithole I come from lol
Ouch.
Sounds a hell of a lot like my Australian school experience.
My high school was great, if you were doing poorly in a class then next year they’d put you in an easier class to bring up your average grade (And if that didn’t work, then they’d just ignore you).
I learned more about algebra from making games in BASIC than I ever did in any class.
Programming taught me math, problem solving, and how to reassemble a keyboard after it bounces off the wall and shatters into 103 pieces.
Ah, likely a fellow Model M owner, if I am not mistaken.
Not many other keyboards can survive such treatment.
And yes it is a PITA to pick up but that moment when the keys first scatter is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.
no wonder people learn to hate math
Your mom and pounder
The third burger failed because it was a stupid amount when it came out, iirc it was more expensive than the quarter lber and like a dollar less than a double quarter lber.
Well yeah, that’s how math should work. It’s more expensive than the thing it’s bigger than, and less expensive than the thing it’s smaller than.
My point was almost everyone would rather spend the extra dollar to get more especially because the double quarter lber came with a larger fry iirc.
They sold different size fries with different burgers? Not just small medium large choice for any burger? I’ve never heard of that
Iirc yes, I’m pretty sure the quarter was a medium fry and the double a large.
WTF is a, “small” or a “medium” for that matter??
Were you trying to say large, extra large, and super size? /s
It failed at more chains than just McDonald’s. Lots of places had 1/3 burger patties only and most have switched to 1/4 and didn’t even alter the price… More profit and they get less headache about it.
Never really saw it anywhere else at least here in the Midwest.
You don’t really see much in the midwest except a few cows and tornados.
And corn. Don’t forget about the corn
Hardee’s had them in the Southeast.
“lber” is making me irrationally angry.
That’s fair.
made from pure lberian lbex meat
