The McDonald’s Quarter Pounder Competitor Menu Item That Flopped
Two hands holding a cheeseburger – Skynesher/Getty Images
The quarter-pound burger has long been the gold standard weight for beef patties. One of the simplest ways to divide a pound of ground meat in half: in half, then in half again. The result is hearty burgers that are neither too big nor too small. McDonald’s realized this in the 1970s when a franchisee created and invented the Quarter Pounder, and soon his invention spread like wildfire (there’s a reason the Quarter Pounder with cheese took the #2 spot in Food Republic’s burger rankings).
But something strange happened over the next decade when fast food giant A&W tried to take over QP. The American burger chain beloved by Canadians launched a one-third pound burger in the U.S., but it failed. But why?
On paper, the third-pounder showed that everything was going well. It had a larger patty than the QP, it was the same price (so Americans would get more meat for their dollar), and A&W was marketing it badly. But its sales were much lower than executives expected, especially for such a large deal. A&W ran some focus groups to get to the bottom of the issue. The results were surprising. Because the number three was lower than the number four, Americans thought the third-pounder was smaller. Never mind that in fractions, one-third is actually larger than one-fourth. They turned up their noses at the idea of paying the same amount of money for less.
Read more: Fast Food Burgers Ranked From Worst to Best, According to Reddit
How A&W turned a historic math failure into a hilarious marketing triumph.
A&W – Promotional photo of 3/9 burgers from A&W Restaurants
After nearly 40 years of living with the knowledge that Americans’ ignorance of fractions led to one of the most talked-about failures in fast food history (even worse than the failure of some of McDonald’s menu items), A&W did the funniest thing possible for its new advertising campaign in 2021. Citing the misconception that the number three is less than the number four and therefore one-third must be less than one-quarter, A&W reintroduced its third-pounder as 3/9-lb. hamburger. “After all, if people think ¼ is greater than ⅓, then they must think 3/9 is MUCH larger. Right?” A. Press release To read.
The campaign also suggested that if any restaurant ran out of the 3/9-pound burger, it could replace it with a 2/6-pound burger (mathematically the same size in case you’re still short on fractions!). The company also released limited marketing materials to help promote the mostly digital campaign. While A&W doesn’t directly attribute its growth over the last few years to this 3/9 promotion, the company has seen a financial shift for the better in the time since its inception, reporting a 3.1% increase in system sales in Q3 when comparing 2024 to 2025 (for each). Retail Insider).
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