[HN Gopher] Burger King faces legal claim over size of Whopper
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Burger King faces legal claim over size of Whopper
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 17 points
Date : 2023-08-30 20:02 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| switch007 wrote:
| Whoppers are actually disgusting in the UK. They fall apart, the
| meat is dry, the tomato is anaemic and the bun is devoid of
| moisture. I'd take a couple of PS1.29 McDonald's burgers any day
| over a whopper (they must be PS5-7 these days?)
|
| Being the UK, this does not stop people buying them. BK is very
| popular at service stations for example, despite the high prices.
| Though I'm sure McDonald's overall is far more popular
| bdcravens wrote:
| Best outcome is to require BK to give claimants coupons for free
| Big Macs.
| pieterr wrote:
| Reminds me of the Hamburger Scene in Falling Down.
|
| https://youtu.be/zJs9p-VNORw
| datavirtue wrote:
| Hmmm...I'm wondering why we don't include all business news, as
| this is the least important of all the stories coming across the
| wire right now.
| sposeray wrote:
| [dead]
| miohtama wrote:
| As non-US person, what is the motivation of these kind of
| lawsuits which seem to be ridiculous from a layman perspective?
| Is it because how the US system is stacked to give a massive
| payout to a law firm who presents the clients?
|
| As in other countries, people would just stop eating in the place
| if the food falls short of expectations.
| TylerE wrote:
| Not so much money, of whcih there is usually very little
| (exception: stuff that ends up being found to cause cancer)
| after the lawyers take their giant cut (which is totally fair -
| these cases are taken on a "you don't get anything, we don't
| get anything" basis, and the lawyers front all the money for
| expert witnesses, investigations, etc).
|
| The motivation for the people filing the suit is to _get the
| company to stop doing it_.
| rurp wrote:
| These lawsuits change the calculations of other companies
| tempted to engage in false advertising. The _only_ reason
| actual Whoppers don 't match what is shown in commercials is so
| that Burger King can squeeze out a larger profit margin.
|
| Stealing a handful of cents on each transaction isn't a big
| deal on any one sale, but adds up to a lot at their volume.
| Corporations have a lot of incentive to be dishonest, and
| lawsuits are one of the few effective ways to punish that
| behavior.
| araes wrote:
| In the US, lawsuits are one of the primary ways used to compel
| behavior, especially from corporate institutions.
|
| While your solution has merit, it suffers from tragedy of the
| commons issues. I cannot compel other customers to stop eating
| there. I cannot compel other fast food restaurants to act
| better.
|
| Quality version: McD and Wendy's look at BK, and see BK makes
| large profits selling junk, look at their own process and say
| "we waste money on quality we don't need", and then they all
| race to the bottom.
|
| If the situation is bad, and the market mostly colludes (such
| as with recent price hikes, where everyone knows everyone else
| is going to raise prices, so they all do), then all you're left
| with is: "They all act that way, because they know we have no
| options." All burgers now cost $5 more. Bloomberg at least
| refers to this phenomenon as "Excuseflation." [1] Also similar
| to "Shrinkflation." (Products across all stores slowly become
| smaller)
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/how-
| excus...
| araes wrote:
| This case was filed in the US District Court of Florida back in
| 2022 and has only recently resurfaced.
|
| In a somewhat rare turn, the Daily Mail coverage [1] of this
| article, is actually quite superior, as it features several
| direct images from the court documents, including references of
| "Current Advertisement" vs "Actual Product."
|
| Its not difficult to see why they're mad. From most of the
| imagery, it looks like BK has an aversion to spending even a few
| cents on lettuce. The situation's bad enough that most comments
| amount to "of course it does not look like the ads, they never
| do." Most are "bad", yet the Spicy Whopper Melt is almost
| laughable.
|
| My personal view is this might be huge, if the plaintiff's win,
| as it then sets a strong precedent about the "amount" of truth in
| advertising, and when is a crushed lump of bread and meat too far
| from the picture. How much $ do you have to spend making sure
| what arrives on your plastic tray, or in your take out bag, is
| kind of close to the picture? At least in the $300+ billion
| dollar US fast food industry.
|
| [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10684749/Class-
| acti...
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