especially in the context of foodstuffs the decagramm (or just deka in common language) is getting used in Austria, don't know if it's the same in germany, so it would be a 25 deka burger
Eh that's regional still, like in dutch we've changed the meaning of old imperial words to be equal to metric quantities, though probably used more common by older people. So 1 ons (ounce) = 100g and a pond (pound) is half a kg. But this is mostly used at a butcher. For other stuff we mostly just use the metric nomenclature.
Fractions still work the same way. The thing is Americans would think the 1/100 is bigger than 1/2, because 100>2. Doesn't matter what unit you start with
Edit: I see what you're saying with the names. But do you think the average american knows that a quarter pounder is less than a third pounder?
I don't think they're significantly stupider than anywhere else. I don't know if there even are statistics on that, I should probably check. Plenty of people are terrible at math over here in Europe too.
The average American literally works in random-ass fractions all the time and doesn't rely on everything being base ten.
I really want to believe that, as an American. I really, really do. How would a legitimate way of testing that go? There's no feasible way to test EVERYBODY, so you'd have to consult the statistics people, who I am not.
I was about to start looking into median ages and education rates and literacy, but I really don't care that much about this as I lay in bed and am about to go to sleep, so I asked chatgpt, which then gave me a long answer with this at the end:
Yes, the average American probably knows that 1/3 is greater than 1/4, but a noticeable percentage—especially among adults with lower educational attainment or math anxiety—may hesitate or answer incorrectly, especially outside of a clear, direct question.
And my intuition tells me this is likely right on.
one way to test it is if a major corporation active all over the country introduces a product with a fraction in the name, meant as a competitor to another product with a smaller fraction. the sales numbers would roughly reflect the result.
I grew up with a mcds and an a&w nearby in the 90s and 00s. A&W is kinda like Wendy's: their food just kinda sucks. I don't look at value that closely unless all other things are equal. So saying "nobody bought our burger because they all can't read numbers" is kind've a petulant behavior unless it's proven imo.. it's like making excuses for your failures.
People just LIKE McDonald's. And and brand loyalty is real.
People all over the world like McDonald's for different reasons. That's not a serious question.
Can this not be Reddit? Please? Reddit culture sucked and I left there for good reason. It doesn't have to be funny or clever anymore. It's just real people having real discussion, intelligently, on a real level, yeah?
Most Americans are educated, but it's a really diverse country with lots of issues. There are plenty of people in countries that use metric that don't even understand metric or fractions, too, as most people are the exact goddamn same, especially now with the internet. A&W burgers were a specific type and I don't remember them being very good. I think that's why they failed, not because people couldn't maximize the value. If anything, I think it was a death spiral in a company known for putting soft serve and soda together, not 1/12th of a pound of shitty beef.
They probably weren't making much money, had to cut back, shitty employees cutting quality because they don't care and bad leadership, and people stopped going even more, and then leadership blamed literacy instead of their own repeated fuckups and that nobody really liked them anymore.
Here in Japan, it's one of the few restaurants that's often open at 4 AM and has free wifi and phone charging, and is the same across the country. Kinda like wafflehouse, I rarely eat there, but it's nice as a last resort.
The food is still mid, and kinda expensive at 2/3 or less the cost in the US.
Yes and no. Imperial measurements that are not integers are displayed in fractions. Hence quarterpounders and thirpounders. In metrics, fractions are rarely used. Because the scales are more granular and because non-integers are usually displayed in decimals.
People thinking a third-pound-burger being smaller than a quarterpounder could not have happened with metrics, because, well, look at the title.
I’m from a country where we use metric and can’t think of anything that would normally be displayed as a fraction. Sure we know what half and third are, but they’re not used officially for anything
A recipe with metric units will default to gram amounts that are divisible by ten and thus infinitely easier to halve than "5/8 of your grandmother's good cake spoon" or any such folksy nonsense.
I would round it to 40ml. I have no idea how much 1/6th of a cup would be. Most of my cups are different sizes too so I wouldn’t know which on to trust. Also they are oddly shaped and not transparent making it a real challenge all and all.
Imperial measurements that are not integers are displayed in fractions.
Often, they're not: look at packaging labels especially in grocery stores.
Engineers use decimals regardless of unit.
Weight scales in the US don't mark 1⁄3.
Quarter & third likely show up for verbal ease/brevity of naming: saying 250 grams is a bit of mouthful & unlikely for naming anything.
I suspect if Americans used metric, they might still use fractions to refer to burgers by weight/mass in kg (like drugs!).
In metrics, fractions are rarely used.
Also convention.
Nothing prevents 1⁄3 kg, 1⁄4 kg, and I'd expect to see 1⁄3 kg more often than 0.3̅ kg if rounding were avoided.
In metric, Americans still would get this wrong, because they don't understand fractions despite using them.
Or are you suggesting everyone would get the order of 1⁄3 kg & 1⁄4 kg wrong?
Americans rarely see 1/3. We typically only use binary fractions: halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths. Occasionally, 32nds. Smaller than that, we use decimal.
Obviously 1/3 vs 1/4 is the same distinction regardless of unit. But part of the whole idea of metric is avoiding dealing with fractions in lieu of decimals. It's inherently less fraction-heavy.
I know that. But practically, if you are trying to measure 1/3 of an arbitrary distance, or 1/3 of an arbitrary weight, you are not going to be able to hit the exact, precise measurement using normal household or kitchen tools. Therefore your origin assertion that 1/3 as a fraction is more accurate than decimal is meaningless, as you can't actually utilise that extra precision.
I just found the picture with the caption during a web search for such an infographic. Only the Goodfellas-part is from me. But does it matter what kind of burger it is?
Only for the quality of the meme. And seeing as this is the comment section of the "memes" comm, it seems like the perfect place to discuss just that topic. If this was in shitposts then yeah, who cares. But since it is this comm, people are going to critique things more minutely.
The meme is literally about two fast food restaurants and the quantity of ground beef they sell. It’s not like he was stretching to point out that’s a plant based burger…
Anyone repeating this 1/4 vs 1/3 bullshit never had one of their 1/3lb burgers. They were fucking terrible. Sysco prison-grade burger patties, drowned in store-brand ketchup with a thin slice of "American"-flavored yellow #5.
Absolute worst burger I've ever had.
Growing up, A&W was for chili dogs and a big glass mug of rootbeer. Never order anything else; its always a fat sack of disappointment.
Recently it occurred to me that in the US we have 25¢ coins but $20 bills. It never bothered me before but it's really odd. Especially when many other countries have 20"¢" coins.
20¢ coins would be better for transitioning away from smaller denominations of coins. If you got rid of everything smaller you could drop a decimal place.
They are less prominent by location I suppose. A lot of it likely had to do with speed. Places like McDonald's went with thin patties to compensate for speed. Krystals was one of the first chains, and they press 5 holes in each patty before they hit the grill. The smash burgers were just another way to cook them high and fast. I like them a lot but it's something I rarely do at home because the odds of setting off the smoke alarm is high. And that's annoying as all hell. Flat tops on outdoor grills are becoming more of a thing from what I've heard, which may be lending to more people making them at home. I've heard several people talking about Blackstones or what not. The American family was known to make burgers on a grill from most films, which you couldn't really make smash burgers like that with grates
I see this repeated all the time and I'm sure there's some truth to it, but A&W burgers are also disgusting and more expensive than their competitors. So there's that.
Maybe the problem is that nasty pointy cucumber on the bottom of it. Wait, it's that a veggie burger? Who the hell puts pointy cucumber on a veggie burger?
If we're talking about a focus group specifically comprised of regular fast food consumers, you're already kinda pre-selecting for the lowest common denominator.
No surprise that this segment would have lower education overall
Is that like a crab cake as a burger? What's up with the giant chunks of cucumber? That sweet and sour sauce running down it is gonna make that so messy and the bun is gonna be sliding off in both sides and soaked through.
Christ that is more cursed a burger than an A&W burger could ever be.
The A&W research firm organized focus groups. The results revealed that many participants mistakenly believed that one-third of a pound was smaller than one-fourth (quarter) of a pound. Focus group participants expressed confusion over the price, asking why they should pay the same amount for a "smaller" third-pound burger.
This misunderstanding stemmed from consumers focusing on the numbers "3" and "4," leading them to conclude that one-third (1/3) was smaller than one-fourth (1/4), even though the opposite is true.[2]
A similar explanation appeared in The New York Times in 2014, citing the third-pound burger as one of the most vivid examples of consumer arithmetic failure.[3] In taste tests, customers actually preferred A&W's burger to McDonald's, and it was less expensive.
According to a CBC report, more than half of the people surveyed about the burger said they didn't buy it because they thought they were getting less meat.[4]
This is even more interesting if you notice that Americans use fractions a lot, maybe even more than countries with metric system. It’s 1/2 pound, 5/8 inch, 3/4 mile and so on. Countries with metric system just change the units. Typically we don’t say 1/2 km, we say 500m.
That's interesting. I never really noticed it but I'm not a fan of changing units. Whatever the "base unit" is for something is what I'll use, even if it crosses the order of magnitude threshold.
Metric always gets decimal though, and sae units get fractions.
I've gotten myself switched to metric for kitchen weights and volume, and for small distances in projects I'm working on.
I'll buy a 1/2 pound of meat, and then measure out 200 grams, with 100 ml of stock and 0.5 grams of something-small-i-cant-think-of-for-an-example-recipie.
Saying 500 milligrams feels wrong. So does asking for 1000 ml of pop though, since that's the "wrong unit".
I think there's something baked into the American brain that says unit conversion is a source of error and should be avoided. Converting from 1 mile to 2640 feet is obviously gonna cause issues.
As for the fractions, I think that's because sae units developed in a context where division by whole numbers was helpful, and metric was designed so that division by 10 was consistent and predictable.
Nothing intrinsically wrong with fractional units, other than 1/3 meter being a less reasonable number of centimeters than the inches in 1/3 yard.
In taste tests, customers actually preferred A&W's burger to McDonald's,
If those taste tests are accurate, I'm guessing that individual stores could select their own suppliers, and didn't choose the suppliers used for the taste tests. Because every A&W burger I've had has been terrible. Completely inedible.
I would rather buy a quarter pounder from anywhere else than accept a free 1/3, 1/2, or 1lb A&W burger.
We can't afford bigger burgers now anyway, the price of beef is insane. And when bigger burgers are desired, they'll sell "double quarter pounders". Not that Americans generally need bigger burgers anyway, but that's a different topic.
They are actually 1/10 lol. I think that's why, they don't want ppl to know how tiny those patties are. I add two patties to bring it up to 4 total at 4/10 lb, puts it 1 patty shy of a double quarter pounder.
Yes, I've literally seen baked goods advertised like that. One bakery in my town is proud of its bigger-than-average pretzels and puts the weight right there on the ad posters.
I hear this type of take often but I'm skeptical that it happened (originally heard it as McDonald's doing it, not A&W) and I'm skeptical that it's the reason it failed.
You could test this by setting up a food stall that sells something like this as a control.
6 pc for $5
9 pc for $5
12 pc for $9
Then do something similar with the burgers. See how many people inherently want more for the same price. Then switch it up so the middle one is cheaper. Switch the ordering of the lists as well. Etc.
Do I think some people just don't understand fractions and think third is less? Sure. But I think there are too many variables to say that's it alone. If someone is that bad with math, it's gonna matter if you write it as ½ ⅓ ¼ or half third quarter. Then it's gonna matter if they ask what the ⅓ means versus if the cashier asks if they want "half, third, or quarter".
All that to say, I think there are definitely some people who don't inherently want more food, even if it's the same price (and maybe even if it's cheaper) and I'm not sure how many people like that there are versus people who are bad at the math aspect. Throw in stuff about how the menu is presented and I just don't see how we can really come to this conclusion.
Shout out to the time my buddy realized it was 1¢ cheaper to get two 6 of meals than one 12 pc meal. (Basically 6 of was like $5.99 and 12 pc was like $11.99 or whatever.)
There's plenty of blunders like this. Like when JCPenny's just gave great prices and sales dropped because if something is $50, that's too much. But 75% off from $200, well, that's a deal! We know more about the JCPenny one, because it happened in 2012 and not 1980-something
Or at least had an education system capable of teaching basic maths
You're from the UK I presume then? 🙂
Americans if they adopted the metric system: ".25kg > .5kg"
Classic.
Which one of those is a third?
Deoends on whether you're asking for a third of 0.75kg or a third of 1.5 kg
0.25 > 0.3
0.03333333333333333~
Missed a bit
But that's easy to solve by just adding a zero to .5
.25kg < .50kg
Though I could see some profit seeking companies selling a .250 burger for 25% more than their .25 burger.
The likely answer lol
Sounds to me like they missed the opportunity to sell a 1/5 burger for more instead.
Fifthy pounder on the way
The filthy pounder with cheese. Sounds like a good movie.
A regular McDonald's hamburger is 1/10, I think people would have figured it out at that point.
TIL fractions don't exist in the metric system.
We wouldn't normally say "I'd like a 18/100 kilogram burger"...
Yup for us its 250g vs 333g burgers. Or 0.25 vs 0.33kg
especially in the context of foodstuffs the decagramm (or just deka in common language) is getting used in Austria, don't know if it's the same in germany, so it would be a 25 deka burger
MORE DEKA!!!
Eh that's regional still, like in dutch we've changed the meaning of old imperial words to be equal to metric quantities, though probably used more common by older people. So 1 ons (ounce) = 100g and a pond (pound) is half a kg. But this is mostly used at a butcher. For other stuff we mostly just use the metric nomenclature.
And these signs could have used ounces instead. But they didn't. We had other units available. The units weren't the issue
well they do, but since it's metric it's always 1/10 1/100 ... and they have their own name so no math needed
Fractions still work the same way. The thing is Americans would think the 1/100 is bigger than 1/2, because 100>2. Doesn't matter what unit you start with
Edit: I see what you're saying with the names. But do you think the average american knows that a quarter pounder is less than a third pounder?
I don't think they're significantly stupider than anywhere else. I don't know if there even are statistics on that, I should probably check. Plenty of people are terrible at math over here in Europe too.
The average American literally works in random-ass fractions all the time and doesn't rely on everything being base ten.
I really want to believe that, as an American. I really, really do. How would a legitimate way of testing that go? There's no feasible way to test EVERYBODY, so you'd have to consult the statistics people, who I am not.
I was about to start looking into median ages and education rates and literacy, but I really don't care that much about this as I lay in bed and am about to go to sleep, so I asked chatgpt, which then gave me a long answer with this at the end:
Yes, the average American probably knows that 1/3 is greater than 1/4, but a noticeable percentage—especially among adults with lower educational attainment or math anxiety—may hesitate or answer incorrectly, especially outside of a clear, direct question.
And my intuition tells me this is likely right on.
one way to test it is if a major corporation active all over the country introduces a product with a fraction in the name, meant as a competitor to another product with a smaller fraction. the sales numbers would roughly reflect the result.
Mmmmm.... Doubt.
I grew up with a mcds and an a&w nearby in the 90s and 00s. A&W is kinda like Wendy's: their food just kinda sucks. I don't look at value that closely unless all other things are equal. So saying "nobody bought our burger because they all can't read numbers" is kind've a petulant behavior unless it's proven imo.. it's like making excuses for your failures.
People just LIKE McDonald's. And and brand loyalty is real.
...why?
People all over the world like McDonald's for different reasons. That's not a serious question.
Can this not be Reddit? Please? Reddit culture sucked and I left there for good reason. It doesn't have to be funny or clever anymore. It's just real people having real discussion, intelligently, on a real level, yeah?
Most Americans are educated, but it's a really diverse country with lots of issues. There are plenty of people in countries that use metric that don't even understand metric or fractions, too, as most people are the exact goddamn same, especially now with the internet. A&W burgers were a specific type and I don't remember them being very good. I think that's why they failed, not because people couldn't maximize the value. If anything, I think it was a death spiral in a company known for putting soft serve and soda together, not 1/12th of a pound of shitty beef.
They probably weren't making much money, had to cut back, shitty employees cutting quality because they don't care and bad leadership, and people stopped going even more, and then leadership blamed literacy instead of their own repeated fuckups and that nobody really liked them anymore.
Here in Japan, it's one of the few restaurants that's often open at 4 AM and has free wifi and phone charging, and is the same across the country. Kinda like wafflehouse, I rarely eat there, but it's nice as a last resort.
The food is still mid, and kinda expensive at 2/3 or less the cost in the US.
Pretty sure fractions are pure math & not metric or imperial.
Americans do be dumb AF, though.
Yes and no. Imperial measurements that are not integers are displayed in fractions. Hence quarterpounders and thirpounders. In metrics, fractions are rarely used. Because the scales are more granular and because non-integers are usually displayed in decimals.
People thinking a third-pound-burger being smaller than a quarterpounder could not have happened with metrics, because, well, look at the title.
I’m from a country where we use metric and can’t think of anything that would normally be displayed as a fraction. Sure we know what half and third are, but they’re not used officially for anything
You've never had to halve a recipe before? Which is easier to do in your head, half of 78.862 milliliters or half of 1/3 cup?
No recipe lists 78.862 mm of anything.
A recipe with metric units will default to gram amounts that are divisible by ten and thus infinitely easier to halve than "5/8 of your grandmother's good cake spoon" or any such folksy nonsense.
I would round it to 40ml. I have no idea how much 1/6th of a cup would be. Most of my cups are different sizes too so I wouldn’t know which on to trust. Also they are oddly shaped and not transparent making it a real challenge all and all.
Often, they're not: look at packaging labels especially in grocery stores. Engineers use decimals regardless of unit.
Weight scales in the US don't mark 1⁄3.
Quarter & third likely show up for verbal ease/brevity of naming: saying 250 grams is a bit of mouthful & unlikely for naming anything. I suspect if Americans used metric, they might still use fractions to refer to burgers by weight/mass in kg (like drugs!).
Also convention. Nothing prevents 1⁄3 kg, 1⁄4 kg, and I'd expect to see 1⁄3 kg more often than 0.3̅ kg if rounding were avoided.
In metric, Americans still would get this wrong, because they don't understand fractions despite using them. Or are you suggesting everyone would get the order of 1⁄3 kg & 1⁄4 kg wrong?
Americans rarely see 1/3. We typically only use binary fractions: halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths. Occasionally, 32nds. Smaller than that, we use decimal.
Obviously 1/3 vs 1/4 is the same distinction regardless of unit. But part of the whole idea of metric is avoiding dealing with fractions in lieu of decimals. It's inherently less fraction-heavy.
I find it funny how people are very confidently incorrect here. Best example I can think of is to compare an imperial and metric drill bit set
Are Europeans afraid of fractions or something? It's way quicker to mentally add 9/16 and 3/8 compared to 0.5625 and 0.3750...
Like I get that metric is better but "metric is when no fractions" make 0/1 sense.
Edit - tfw you get ratiod by "9+6 is hard" in a thread about people not understanding basic arithmetic
I’m a lifelong American and neither of these are easy, but the decimals are much more like real numbers to me.
I encounter decimal points in my day to day interactions with numbers. Not so with fractions.
I will start learning fractions when restaurants put them in their prices.
“That will be $4 and 3/4,” said no one ever, thank gob.
Fractions are more accurate. You can't display 1/3 as a decimal. Americans are dumb, but this isn't an imperial versus metric thing.
Your accuracy goes out of the window when you are actually measuring things though. The error is as significant as rounding 1/3 to 0.33
I know that. But practically, if you are trying to measure 1/3 of an arbitrary distance, or 1/3 of an arbitrary weight, you are not going to be able to hit the exact, precise measurement using normal household or kitchen tools. Therefore your origin assertion that 1/3 as a fraction is more accurate than decimal is meaningless, as you can't actually utilise that extra precision.
Let's just pretend that metric doesn't have fractions.
Not that they don't exist, but in my experience I have never seen them used, if something is, say, 1/2 liter you see it written as 50cl...
For burgers, I have seen
But maybe it's only my experience and in other parts of Europe it's different
1/2 liter is usually marked as 0,5 liter.
I want a 0.5 liter burger, please.
No it's 500 mL
SI says either 0.5 Liter or better 0.0005 m^3
? No it isn't
It depends on the country.
Yes it is, living in Brazil all my life and I've** seen it and wrote it myself that way
Edit: one to I've, stupid gboard has gotten so fucking bad with
shippingswipping latelyOh ok cool never been to brazil
Would you rather eat the 113-grammer burger? Or the 151-grammer burger?
Yes.
There is also a metric pound but honestly people don't use it.
Viertel Pfünder und Drittel Pfünder isjust as confusing.
No, Americans could have had bigger burgers if they weren't stupid.
Is this one of those intentionally-obviously-wrong comments designed to encourage people to comment on the meme?
Worked didn't it?
It's not like Americans need bigger food.
Why does this meme have a veggie burger?
Is it a vegan meme?
How do you spot a meat eater? They'll tell you.
Just pointing out the odd choice of pictures.
It’s obviously not a A&W burger or from McDonald’s.
In fact I don’t think either chain had a vegetarian option in the ‘80’s but I could be wrong.
I just found the picture with the caption during a web search for such an infographic. Only the Goodfellas-part is from me. But does it matter what kind of burger it is?
Only for the quality of the meme. And seeing as this is the comment section of the "memes" comm, it seems like the perfect place to discuss just that topic. If this was in shitposts then yeah, who cares. But since it is this comm, people are going to critique things more minutely.
If you’re happy with it that’s all that matters.
I almost commented that I’d never seen the burger attached to this story before and if that’s what it was, it may not have been the fractions!
The meme is literally about two fast food restaurants and the quantity of ground beef they sell. It’s not like he was stretching to point out that’s a plant based burger…
I just used the opportunity to flip some of what vegans come across daily.
No one went to A&W for burgers back then, footlong chili dog and root beer.
This, exactly.
Anyone repeating this 1/4 vs 1/3 bullshit never had one of their 1/3lb burgers. They were fucking terrible. Sysco prison-grade burger patties, drowned in store-brand ketchup with a thin slice of "American"-flavored yellow #5.
Absolute worst burger I've ever had.
Growing up, A&W was for chili dogs and a big glass mug of rootbeer. Never order anything else; its always a fat sack of disappointment.
That must have been a US thing. A&W in Canada has had excellent Teen burgers for decades.
The hell is a "teen burger"? Canadians are eating the underaged!!
A&W now is pretty damn good in the US. As a Wisconsinite, their cheese curds are better than Culvers and it's not even close.
I miss it. We’d get footlongs and a gallon of root beer then go to the park across from it. I wonder if it’s still there.
But that can't be right! I have it on good authority that A&W stands for Amburgers and Woot beer!
Should have sold it as a 2/6ths burger.
The maths teachers wouldn't have been happy, but apparently the buyers would have.
"Woah, 2/6 is waayyyy bigger than 1/4, not like that teensy 1/3 burger they used to have"
They did bring it back as the 3/9ths burger.
Lol that's amazing, I'm not American so I've not come across this ad before. Thanks.
[VINCENT]
[JULES]
[VINCENT]
[JULES]
[VINCENT]
"No they have the metric system, they don't know what the fuck a quarter pounder is"
Fractions aren't imperial, fractions are fractions, everyone has them. It's the 'pound' that's imperial and normal people don't use.
Movie clip
#woosh
How could OP have transcribed the movie clip so wrong, but still made an absurdist joke? Thanks for clearing it up.
I've been a victim of Poe's Law, but there has to be some threshold where it's not ambiguous.
Recently it occurred to me that in the US we have 25¢ coins but $20 bills. It never bothered me before but it's really odd. Especially when many other countries have 20"¢" coins.
20¢ coins would be better for transitioning away from smaller denominations of coins. If you got rid of everything smaller you could drop a decimal place.
We can already just round to the nearest quarter. Basically no machines take anything less than quarters.
Do Americans need bigger burgers?
Yes
Fair question. ☝️
Americans are every bit as capable of assuming a 1/8 kg burger is bigger than a 1/6 kg burger.
I'm gonna move the goal posts here and say smaller burgers are inherently better. I don't want to chew on a giant pile of ground beef.
You must love the smashburger trend
Absolutely. Throw on some cheddar or muenster and drizzle some hot bbq, we're in business.
I love them, but I wouldn't consider them a trene. It's one of the original burgers in the U.S.
Before BK or MCDonalds. And sold at places like Steak N Shake which is fairly common.
I'd consider them a trend, at least in my area. Maybe they're not new, but I never saw them until last year and now they're everywhere.
They are less prominent by location I suppose. A lot of it likely had to do with speed. Places like McDonald's went with thin patties to compensate for speed. Krystals was one of the first chains, and they press 5 holes in each patty before they hit the grill. The smash burgers were just another way to cook them high and fast. I like them a lot but it's something I rarely do at home because the odds of setting off the smoke alarm is high. And that's annoying as all hell. Flat tops on outdoor grills are becoming more of a thing from what I've heard, which may be lending to more people making them at home. I've heard several people talking about Blackstones or what not. The American family was known to make burgers on a grill from most films, which you couldn't really make smash burgers like that with grates
Quar ter poun der. Perfect size. Good marketing.
"A ThIRd PoUnDeR pLeASe". Too much to chew. Bad marketing.
I will make a 1/100 pound burger, instant money machine
I've just had a radical idea to solve obesity in America
It was more because there weren’t many A&Ws around. Closest to me was over an hour away.
This is so dumb
the whole meme is just euro cope
I think you meant to type "nearly every country on Earth".
I see this repeated all the time and I'm sure there's some truth to it, but A&W burgers are also disgusting and more expensive than their competitors. So there's that.
1/3 equals 1/4 because in both cases you have 1.
Maybe the problem is that nasty pointy cucumber on the bottom of it. Wait, it's that a veggie burger? Who the hell puts pointy cucumber on a veggie burger?
If we're talking about a focus group specifically comprised of regular fast food consumers, you're already kinda pre-selecting for the lowest common denominator.
No surprise that this segment would have lower education overall
Is that like a crab cake as a burger? What's up with the giant chunks of cucumber? That sweet and sour sauce running down it is gonna make that so messy and the bun is gonna be sliding off in both sides and soaked through.
Christ that is more cursed a burger than an A&W burger could ever be.
Yeah, if this is the burger they introduced then I think we know why it failed.
Burger looks like ass
"Uh a 151.197 grammer with cheese."
I thought this was kind of a myth? I recall it being something like the quarter pounder was just well marketed so beat out even bigger burgers.
Wikipedia confirmed though:
This is even more interesting if you notice that Americans use fractions a lot, maybe even more than countries with metric system. It’s 1/2 pound, 5/8 inch, 3/4 mile and so on. Countries with metric system just change the units. Typically we don’t say 1/2 km, we say 500m.
I suppose it's much more rare for us to use 1/3 specifically. It does show up in cooking, but even there it's hidden in the units a lot of the time.
That's interesting. I never really noticed it but I'm not a fan of changing units. Whatever the "base unit" is for something is what I'll use, even if it crosses the order of magnitude threshold.
Metric always gets decimal though, and sae units get fractions.
I've gotten myself switched to metric for kitchen weights and volume, and for small distances in projects I'm working on.
I'll buy a 1/2 pound of meat, and then measure out 200 grams, with 100 ml of stock and 0.5 grams of something-small-i-cant-think-of-for-an-example-recipie.
Saying 500 milligrams feels wrong. So does asking for 1000 ml of pop though, since that's the "wrong unit".
I think there's something baked into the American brain that says unit conversion is a source of error and should be avoided. Converting from 1 mile to 2640 feet is obviously gonna cause issues.
As for the fractions, I think that's because sae units developed in a context where division by whole numbers was helpful, and metric was designed so that division by 10 was consistent and predictable.
Nothing intrinsically wrong with fractional units, other than 1/3 meter being a less reasonable number of centimeters than the inches in 1/3 yard.
There's no change of "unit" when going from km to m or ml to L, etc. It's just the next "size" up or down, we immediately know 500m is half a km.
I know it's not actually a unit change, but in my head there's a resistance to changing the scale.
If one sign says 5km, I expect the next sign to say 0.5km, not 500m.
We use power-of-two denominators. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32. We don't use 1/3, 1/6, 1/9, 1/12, 1/5, 1/7.
We intrinsically know that 1/2 and 16/32 are equivalent; we would have to think about 3/6 or 6/12.
Oof.
If those taste tests are accurate, I'm guessing that individual stores could select their own suppliers, and didn't choose the suppliers used for the taste tests. Because every A&W burger I've had has been terrible. Completely inedible.
I would rather buy a quarter pounder from anywhere else than accept a free 1/3, 1/2, or 1lb A&W burger.
We can't afford bigger burgers now anyway, the price of beef is insane. And when bigger burgers are desired, they'll sell "double quarter pounders". Not that Americans generally need bigger burgers anyway, but that's a different topic.
Good
Carl's Jr. did the same thing. The 1/3 pound was perfect. Two 1/4 patties are too much, one 1/4 patty is too little.
I miss the Carl's Jr. 1/3 pound burger.
Pound. It literally says so
Pardon my short attention span
The funny thing is McDonald's also tried 1/3 lb burgers later on, and also failed.
It's probably also why they don't advertise a Big Mac is 1/5 pound of beef, because it would make the Quarter pounder lose interest I assume.
They are actually 1/10 lol. I think that's why, they don't want ppl to know how tiny those patties are. I add two patties to bring it up to 4 total at 4/10 lb, puts it 1 patty shy of a double quarter pounder.
The patties are 1/10th, yeah. I meant there are 2 of them on the sandwich. Your math checks out, as you added 2 to get to 2/5ths.
"try our new 113g burger"
Yes, I've literally seen baked goods advertised like that. One bakery in my town is proud of its bigger-than-average pretzels and puts the weight right there on the ad posters.
The famous 113 grammer with cheese
There are three countries using the ass backwards Imperial measurement system. USA, Liberia and Myanmar...WTF!?!?
I grew up in America and I can confirm, Americans are very dumb.
I hear this type of take often but I'm skeptical that it happened (originally heard it as McDonald's doing it, not A&W) and I'm skeptical that it's the reason it failed.
You could test this by setting up a food stall that sells something like this as a control.
Then do something similar with the burgers. See how many people inherently want more for the same price. Then switch it up so the middle one is cheaper. Switch the ordering of the lists as well. Etc.
Do I think some people just don't understand fractions and think third is less? Sure. But I think there are too many variables to say that's it alone. If someone is that bad with math, it's gonna matter if you write it as ½ ⅓ ¼ or half third quarter. Then it's gonna matter if they ask what the ⅓ means versus if the cashier asks if they want "half, third, or quarter".
All that to say, I think there are definitely some people who don't inherently want more food, even if it's the same price (and maybe even if it's cheaper) and I'm not sure how many people like that there are versus people who are bad at the math aspect. Throw in stuff about how the menu is presented and I just don't see how we can really come to this conclusion.
Shout out to the time my buddy realized it was 1¢ cheaper to get two 6 of meals than one 12 pc meal. (Basically 6 of was like $5.99 and 12 pc was like $11.99 or whatever.)
I mean, I don't know why you'd be skeptical.
A&W has a write up about it https://www.awrestaurants.com/blog/memories-history/the-truth-about-aws-third-pound-burger-and-the-major-math-mix-up/
And Snope's did an article https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/
There's plenty of blunders like this. Like when JCPenny's just gave great prices and sales dropped because if something is $50, that's too much. But 75% off from $200, well, that's a deal! We know more about the JCPenny one, because it happened in 2012 and not 1980-something
It's not like I'm gonna do research before making every comment. I was skeptical because it sounds far fetched.