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Whether or not you tried or have seen a super-sized meal, McDonald first used this term to get their customers to buy more of their food.
Don’t want to buy multiple burgers? How about we morph five burgers into one burger so you can have one supersize burger? Let’s look at the origins of the supersize.
Supersizing | the movie theater
A man named David Wallerstein worked for a chain of movie theaters in Texas.
Wallerstein tried to find ways to increase the sales of soda and popcorn in his movie theaters. He tried two-for-one deals and other specials but convincing the customers to buy more than one soda and popcorn was difficult.
He thought that people didn’t want to buy more than one of the same item. They worry that it will make them look greedy. Outside of looking greedy, people probably didn’t want to deal with the hassle and the effort of carrying multiple buckets of popcorn to their seats.
They’ll be that person that is constantly munching their popcorn and loudly slurping their drinks throughout the film. The film ends and the person has a mess of tiny popcorn bits and kernels all over the ground, the greasiest fingers, and sore lips from all of the salt.
Wallerstein did discover that people would be more eager to get popcorn and soda if it came in one single gigantic serving. From that, the two-quart bucket of popcorn and 64oz of soda was born. Now people can carry one serving of something that would previously be multiple servings into the theater. Yay for more greasy fingers and sore lips.
Supersizing | McDonald’s
After working in the chain of movie theaters, Wallerstein served on the board of directors at McDonald’s. McDonald’s wanted to boost its food sales. What better time to bring up supersizing to Ray Kroc, one of McDonald’s founders, than now. Ray Kroc…
