It seems that more fast food joints are making news with their promotions.
Burger King's Whopper Virgins campaign created controversy when they found people to taste-test a Whopper and a Big Mac who supposedly hadn't heard of either. As Michael Olson puts it in his The Appetizer column, "There's something almost colonial about the idea of waltzing into Thailand, Transylvania or Greenland and rescuing the locals from their primitive foods with superior North American fare... Aid organizations in particular are incensed."
Wired Magazine reports in Online Burger Promotion Pulled After Going Too Viral that Carl's Jr. tried giving away their flagship "Famous Star" burger to attendees of a Los Angeles Lakers/New Orleans Hornets game. Unfortunately, the URL got out and supposedly hundreds of bargain hunting websites posted the coupon online prompting Carl's to pull the promotion.
In an effort to win some of its morning business back from Starbucks, this week McDonald's put an espresso maker into its fifth Orange County location, according to this post in the OC Register. Their McCafé specialty drinks seem to be a West Coast trial, offering up an espresso, a latte, a mocha, or a cappuccino for less money than Starbucks. Why don't you grab a 510 calorie Sausage Biscuit with Egg while you're there?
Burger King recently made the news again when they created their "Whopper Sacrifice," a Facebook application that gives you a coupon for a free Whopper if you delete 10 people from your Facebook friends list. According to Cnet News, it was quickly pulled by Facebook itself because it, "ran counter to user privacy by notifying people when a user removes a friend."
According to the Press Democrat, Subway has agreed to pay $645,000 to, "settle allegations of overcharging and false advertising made by the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office and other agencies." This is following an investigation by the Sonoma County Department of Weights and Measures found that "any sandwich for $5" didn't mean exactly that.
Maybe that's what Subway gets after I've suffered through hundreds of hours of singing, "Five, five dollar, five dollar foot long..." getting stuck in my head...