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A&W failed to sell their Third Pounder burger in the 1980s because customers thought it was smaller than McDonald’s Quarter Pounder due to not understanding fractions. A&W is also known for their root beer, which they serve in glass tankards to reduce waste.
Fractions and decimals are part of every elementary school student’s education, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those lessons will be remembered in adulthood.
A&W learned this the hard way in the 1980s, when it had to swallow the collective mathematical shame of a nation of fast-food eaters who clearly didn’t understand weights and measures very well.
After seeing rival chain McDonald’s enjoy good sales of its Quarter Pounder for more than a decade, the place that promised “food as good as root beer” sought to get in on the action by introducing an even meatier burger: the Third Pounder. The price was comparable, and the test tastes showed promise, but A&W apparently overlooked one thing: A surprising number of people don’t understand fractions.
Third Pounder sales were poor, and A&W owner Alfred Taubman was so baffled that he hired a research firm to get to the bottom of things. It turns out that the Third Pounder sank because most burger shoppers thought it was smaller than the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, apparently because “4” – as in the fourth – is larger than “3”, as in the third.
So while A&W actually offered customers more bang for their buck, diners didn’t get it and didn’t order the Third Pounder. Taubman later wrote of the response offered by people for avoiding the Third Pounder: “Why, they asked, should we pay the same amount for a third of meat as we do for a quarter pound of meat at McDonald’s? You are overloading us.” As they say, you don’t take into account the taste and, apparently, neither does the count.
Not just root beer:
Roy W. Allen, the “A” of A&W, sold his first root beer in 1919 from a roadside stand he had set up during a World War I veterans return parade in Lodi, California.
Allen was joined by Frank Wright (the “W” in A&W) in opening their first A&W drive-in restaurant in 1923.
A&W serves its root beer in glass tankards to avoid adding more paper cups to landfills; A&W restaurants sell approximately 1.1 million gallons of root beer annually.
