Actually, this will probably backfire on Burger King. This super-premium burger will make the rest of the greasy crap they sell look even more disgusting.
And if anyone wanted a Kobe beef burger, would they order it from Burger King, where it would be handled and prepared by minimum wage lackeys who probably don't even know where Kobe is.

Timely post...I just started reading Ariely's book. I would be curious as to whether any of this has been/will be incorporated into Intro to Eocn course in HS and college.

But will BK put tomatoes on their new burger? The battles over tomato picker pay in Florida is just beginning in Congress

I always suspected that this same effect was why MacDonalds et al offered salads. Not that anyone would want to buy a salad from MacDonalds, no. But because the idea that MacDonalds was healthy enough to serve salads suggested the rest of the food on the menu wasn't as artery-clogging as people previously thought.

Problems with this is that the salads turned out to be as artery-clogging as anything. And I hear people actually ate that stuff! Hooray!

Brendan Mackie,
Busan, South Korea

(PS -- I got the right post this time!)

Yuck. Even though their usual burger is a pale comparison to what I turn out on the grill, I actually like grilled burgers a lot (despite their carcinogenic properties). A fois gras burger? Um, no.

Brendan,

The salads are for the mothers, kids eat happy meals and moms eat salads

It isn't that we sometimes make the wrong decision, but that we make it repeatedly, and in the same way, as a response to certain conditions and mental processes.

Nu? How come evolution didn't eliminate people who had a tendancy to make these wrong decisions as preditors would have evolved to depend on this predictibility?

Perhaps the answer is that the Econs 101, Bayesian Utilitarian definition of rationality actually ain't so rational either? Maybe it's somehow rational to be as "irrational" as we humans are?

Really, this is just absurd. Burger King does have better burgers. Everyone I know thinks that. People like McDonalds because it's cheaper . This is an idiot move because it reinforces peoples negative views of the brand.

Seriously, any time me and my friends are out and we're going to stop at one of these places, it comes down to how much money each person has on them. If we all have enough to eat at Burger King, thats where we go. If we don't, we usually go to McDonalds and load up on dollar menu crap.

85? Really? Even at a pretty good Steakhouse you can get a Kobe Burger for like 30 USD. And thats Japanese Kobe, bot the American Kobe. That seems way over priced even considering the novelty aspect.

This perceptual slight-of-hand may hold true if everything else on their menu weren't less expensive than the Kobe Burger by more than an order of magnitude.

Ugh, I don't think you understand what irrational is.

Often people don't act optimally in the absence of perfect information. That doesn't mean they acting irrationally.

All of economics has always told us this. This isn't an example of behavioral economics.

Rex Stout covered something very close to this in fiction in 1938! "Some Buried Caesar," a Nero Wolfe novel, featured "Tom Pratt of the famous pratterias" (a fast-food chain) paying ridiculous money ($45,000) for a pure-bred Guernsey bull to be barbecued for a party: "For weeks and months every customer that eats a roast beef sandwich in a pratteria will have a sneaking unconscious feeling that that he's chewing a piece of Hickory Caesar Grindon [the bull]! That's what I mean by psychology." Seventy years ago!

They have a burger joint in LV btwn Mandalay and Luxor that has the kobe burger on the menu. It makes the other overpriced burgers downright reasonable in comparison. Though I must say they are decent burgers.

I think it's interesting. Certain things you buy blind - like a piece of furniture. You have no idea what it really costs except in relation to another piece of furniture close by. So there's three chairs. You take the middle priced one. That might be the one the merchant wants you to take...cause they make more profit on it than either the cheap one or the expensive one.

They have a burger joint in LV btwn Mandalay and Luxor that has the kobe burger on the menu.

You might be thinking of Strip Steak, which is actually a pretty expensive Steak House, and that was the Kobe Burger I was thinking of in my earlier comment. Its ~30 USD.

Here's a link for the tomato picker issue raised in the comment above: http://ciw-online.org/

It makes this post all the more timely and depressing. Please do sign the CIW's petition if you check out their website -- they do terrific work.

The Burger Bar at Luxor

"How come evolution didn't eliminate people who had a tendancy to make these wrong decisions as preditors would have evolved to depend on this predictibility?"

Evolution is not a mechanism by which life magically becomes better and better with each passing year.

Evolution is a mechanism by which the traits most conducive to survival and further breeding are passed on through generations. It's not about quality of life. It's about simply surviving and breeding.

Ariely's book was very interesting, although I thought some sections missed the convenience factor of pricing. (If a piece of candy is free, I don't need to dig in my pockets for the penny, etc.)

But even based on his ideas, I think Burger King is overreaching here. This isn't making it look like they have luxury burgers so much as that they're snooty and ridiculous. Fois gras?

Ezra, that story is from the Sun. The Sun has marginally less credibility than a joint op-ed by Bill Kristol and Doug Feith. The chances of it being true are about the same as the earth being destroyed by the Large Hadron Collider. Also, the idea of anyone who lives in Kensington and Chelsea and could afford a Kobe burger eating one at Burger King is hilarious. London's two poshest Japanese restaurants are in that part of town. Why go to Burger King when you could go to Nobu or Zuma and get much better beef for the same money?

It kind of reminds me of former Gov. Spitzer dropping the equivelant of a down payment on a house on escorts. It ain't about the quality or service you get; it's about paying over $100 for a burger.

BTW There's a hot dog place in Adams Morgan that sells $20 hot dogs made of Kobe beef. Not quite 85 pounds mind you, but spending more than $2 on a hot dog is pretty outrageous.

It kind of reminds me of former Gov. Spitzer dropping the equivelant of a down payment on a house on escorts. It ain't about the quality or service you get

It's about paying to make sure that the burger leaves, afterwards? I guess it has a lot of fiber.

LoL, and Anonymous called me sexist...

I boycott any restaurant that serves foi gras, so they just lost them a potential BK Veggie consumer.

I'm not sure it's useful to think of BK and the type of restaurants that actually serve expensive entrees as similar. The economics and consumer psychology of mass brands, luxury good and mid-range goods can be quite different on issues like this. As someone earlier pointed out, why would you buy a Kobe beef and foie gras burger from BK of all places? The teenagers working there would probably fuck it up. As it is in London, that won't be the only place one can buy Kobe beef and you can get better-prepared Kobe for much cheaper prices. This would make some sense in a place where there were no alternatives for Kobe, there is a huge potential market for Kobe and people are willing to pay such outrageous prices for it.

It should also be pointed out that Baltimore, where the Sun is located, has a lot of fast food places where the counter is behind bullet-proof glass (at least some of the ones I've seen), so I doubt this will really help matters.