A&W’s third-pound burger flopped because customers thought a third was smaller than a quarter.
In the 1980s A&W priced a third-pound burger the same as McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. It won blind taste tests but would not sell. The owner, A. Alfred Taubman, hired researchers, and their focus groups asked, “Why should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as we do for a quarter-pound of meat?”
A&W on Brandseum