Burger King announced this week that it is rolling out two new Whoppers to two very different audiences, as the fast food chain shows how it’s adapting to modern times in a fun, playful and dare we say, smart way.
First up, Burger King announced it will deliver Whoppers to LA motorists stuck in traffic. The appropriately titled Traffic Jam Whopper project invites drivers stuck in high-density traffic to order burgers directly from their cars. Burger King uses real-time data to pinpoint the most heavily congested areas of the city at any given time (which, in LA is pretty much everywhere between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.), then offers food to customers stuck in that jam via push notifications and Waze banner ads.
As a driver inches their way through the traffic, they’ll pass through different “delivery zones,” which are areas within a 1.9-mile radius from the nearest Burger King, calculated using traffic and customer data so that Burger King knows which location to use for each customer. Upon entering one of these delivery zones, they can place an order through the BK app. (For safety and legal reasons, orders have to be placed via voice command.) When the food is ready, a Burger King driver hops on a motorcycle and lane splits their way to the car’s exact location to drop the food. Waze banners and digital billboards posted along the delivery zones display information about an order’s progress.
Right now, the Traffic Jam Whopper project only offers the regular Whopper combo meal, which comes with fries and a bottled soda or water.
Burger King ran a hugely successful pilot of the ongoing campaign, which it’s conducting with ad agency We Believers, in Mexico City recently. After Los Angeles, Shanghai and São Paulo are next.
LA, who’s ranked fifth in terms of worst U.S. traffic at peak rush hour times, is an ideal setting for a campaign like this. Unlike in NYC or Boston where you have to weave around pedestrian traffic through a network of narrow streets, in LA everyone’s on the freeway after work.
If it all sounds good to be true, check out a video of the Traffic Jam Whopper project in action in Mexico City:
If you’re like us, you might be wondering, Can I get the new Impossible Whopper delivered to my car? Sadly for hungry flexitarians, Los Angeles is not one of the cities where they can get an Impossible Whopper while stuck on the 405. That said, Burger King did announce yesterday it had started its national expansion of the much buzzed-about plant-based burger into three new cities: Miami, Columbus, GA, and Montgomery, AL. These new burghs join St. Louis, MO, which was the first city to get the Impossible Whopper.
Burger King is hitting the road in a different manner, visiting these three new cities in the “Impossible Whopper Tour Bus,” which is intended amp up excitement around the plant-based patty’s expansion with games, music, and free swag. Hopefully it doesn’t get stuck in too much traffic on the way.
Wrong on the issue of safety. You cannot have business being conducted on the freeways. Once one group does it, all groups will do it. What next, taco salesmen, laundry services, barbers? Will not be legal…