Honestly I think it's a fantastic ad. It's self-deprecating, and even teases the audience's parents. But it also makes the current audience feel smarter, and it's memorable, and you remember that it's more meat than a Quarter Pounder.
The scariest thing about that comic is the alt text: "Pokemon hit the US over a decade ago". It has now been 24 years, making the age of the comic itself rather dramatic.
I was standing at the deli counter of my supermarket and the person in front of me told the employee "I want more than a quarter pound but less than a half pound". I told her "back when I was in school we called that a third of a pound but it might have changed since then, it was a long time ago". She turned around and continued her quest to discover what a third was.
One time when at a burger restaurant with my father when I was maybe 9 or 10, we overheard someone in line ahead of us say (completely seriously) "I don't think I could eat a 1/3 lb burger, so I'll just get a 1/2 lb). I found this terribly amusing back then, and almost two decades later my father and I still make jokes about it every time we go to that restaurant.
The American measuring system is a pain in the butt for a lot of reasons, but "16 ounces to a pound" does make for a lot of very nice even divisions. Half is 8; a quarter is 4; midway between the two is 6.
I've never really bought this story. I mean, it's possible some of the focus group subjects said this, and even probable that some people made that mistake. But I don't know if I'd extrapolate from that that it's the sole, or even main cause for a product launch failing.
If it was Americans' math skills that were at fault for their failure, and not their products, A&W would have learned from this decades ago and become a much more successful franchise than it is today. So, there must be something else holding it back: maybe quality, maybe competition. In the long term you can't blame your mediocre position on customers being too stupid to realize you're the best.
Well, you can, but it won't help. I think this is a fun story to tell, but probably apocryphal, or just the wrong explanation.
I just laughed maniacally about this so I had to explain to my ten year old daughter what this was about. She immediately knew that ⅓ was greater than ¼ though, whew!
A&W restaurants are pretty prevalent in Canada, at least in Toronto anyways. Just looked at stats: they have about ~1000 restaurants in the country spread over 470+ cities.
But a commenter below said they have around a 1000 restaurants worldwide so perhaps the Canadian A&W is a separate entity from the American A&W otherwise that number doesn't make sense.
Canadian A&W is really good, and tbh it's kinda surprising that Canadian A&W hasn't bought out American A&W and tried to expand there.
That being said, I believe Canadian A&W is much more heavily tilted toward the western part of the country, so maybe they feel they have their hands full trying to grab marketshare in Ontario, Quebec and further.
My wife and I stopped in an A&W in Toronto a few years back—we were walking, and hungry, and just needed food. My expectations were not high at all, but damn—it was good!
There's a lot of them in Canada. For some reason, they seem to be common in small isolated towns along highways in northern Ontario, as the only fast food restaurant in the town (if there's another one, it's probably Subway).
Around me (Austin, TX) there are a few A&W restaurants combined with other fast food franchises. The one I see most often is a combined A&W/Long John Silver’s.
They are sprinkled all over, I’ve seen them in New York, Dallas, New Mexico, Michigan, etc. but never in quantity. The quality and menu varies widely across locations, a lot of the time they are paired with other chains like Long John Silver’s. Nostalgia aside I think Sonic is the better place to spend your money - Whataburger or Lottaburger if your in Texas or the southwest states.
Interesting - we had them when I lived in the Midwest and while I didn’t think it was particularly memorable beyond being a decent enough fast food burger, nothing really struck me as awful. Perhaps it’s franchise related.
I did really enjoy the A&W root beer on tap when I went - I think that’s probably the best thing that the restaurant offers.
This has been my experience at several A&W's around the PNW -- it's no In-n-Out, but it's pretty good and a nice break from McDonald's every once in a while (though it's a bit pricey). The root beer (& root beer floats) is definitely the real selling point though.
I can think of at least one within relatively close driving distance to me and another at an outlet mall that’s an hour away. I live in the mid-Michigan area.
They didn't, the 2/6 is made when they run out of 3/9s.
> Fans of big burgers and big digits are encouraged to grab an A&W 3/9 lb. (...) If sold out, a 2/6 lb. Burger can be specially made at no extra charge.
It's not clear that this is why it actually failed. I'm sure they got at least one complaint about that, just by the law of large numbers, but it's not definitive that it played a significant factor in the burger failing.
As an American with no intuition for metric weights, I know 100g is almost a quarter pound but on first impression it sounds like it should be slider-sized.
that's really all you took away from this huh. and it's not even clear that's the real reason why it failed. that's just what some instagram dude said.
The real reason was probably because it was gross. like all the other a&w food
This story is older than Instagram by at least a decade. Also according to the then-ceo of A&W over half of their focus group respondents thought 1/3 was less than 1/4.
