How a Bite Started a Burger War

The CEO of McDonald’s recently took a bite of the Big Arch.

The problem, though, was that the bite was not big enough.

A Burger War

Depending on the location, a Big Arch combo meal from McDonald’s costs somewhere between $11.00 and $14.30. While the high price differentiates the burger from others, so too do the size and the calories. Composed of two half pound patties, cheese, onions, the sauce, and the bun, the Big Arch burger has approximately 1020 calories. The Axios journalist that took a taste said it was really big and heavy.

When McDonald’s CEO took a bite from the Big Arch, the video went viral. Rather than taking the huge chomp required by so large a burger, Chris Kempczinski did a nibble. Then, seeing an opportunity to have some fun, the CEOs of Burger King and Wendy’s went online to display messy, massive, more appropriate (and enthusiastic) bites of their burgers:

Our Bottom Line: Marginal Analysis

Economists like to say that we frequently think at the margin. Ranging from extra sleep to extra chips, the margin is where we decide if we want to do extra. Burger CEOs were certainly thinking at the margin when they decided to take bigger bites.

The wisdom of thinking at the margin takes us back to Alfred Marshall. Remembered as one the first marginalists, Alfred Marshall was born near London in 1842. He was reputedly influenced by an excessively rigid father who required hours of study each night. Sounding rather eccentric, Marshall said that he needed to rest from his work every 15 minutes or so to be sure he was refreshed. During “rest” breaks, he read Shakespeare and Greek plays. As a chair of Political Economy at Cambridge for 23 years, his contributions to the study of economics were massive through his classes, his books, and the eminent economists he taught.

Among his many insights, Marshall told us that margins make a difference. Think of the law of demand. Step by step, as price marches upward, your incentive to spend goes down. But it slides downward by increments. Similarly, he constructed a supply curve through the marginal costs of production. His conclusion, considered revolutionary, was that value comes from both demand and supply. And it all took him back to the margin.

As does the size of a bite from the Big Arch.

My sources and more: Thanks to the Slate Money podcast for inspiring today’s post. Then, telling more about the CEO’s burger bite and the subsequent burger war, the NY Times had the facts.

Please note that parts of “Our Bottom Line” were in a past econlife post.