Flamin’ heck! That’s a lot of burgers

Larissa Ham
March 13, 2012
The Age

It’s proving to be a whopper of a day for Hungry Jack’s.

A whopper of a Hungry Jack’s burger sale crashed group buying site Scoopon earlier this afternoon, with more than 120,000 burgers sold countrywide in under three hours.

In a bid to beef up its social presence, the fast-food giant is advertising a $2 Whopper and fries deal on the daily deals site.

The national deal, which began at noon, had sold 90,000 vouchers in the first two hours, raising the question: could Hungry Jack’s run out of patties? And of course the other question, could The Biggest Loser have a whole new batch of contestants on the way?

The Scoopon deal.
Scoopon’s manager of general sales Jon Beros said the website struggled for a short while with the huge volumes of traffic. At last count more than 165,000 burgers had been sold, with the deal scheduled to end at noon tomorrow.

Mr Beros said the sale has already broken all Scoopon records for the number of vouchers offloaded. However customers did not have to pay for the initial voucher on this deal, and must rather pay $2 on redeeming it at Hungry Jack’s.

“It’s taken us a little bit by surprise as to how popular the offer actually is,” he said.

The offer is limited to somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.

“There’ll be plenty of patties, there won’t be any issue with any consumers,” Mr Beros said.

Scoopon said it was the first time a major fast-food outlet had partnered with a group buying site in Australia, representing a new direction for the sector.

In the past, group buying sites have mainly been used by smaller businesses, and many have struggled to cope with the deluge of customers.

Australian bargain hunters are continuing to embrace the group buying phenomenon. By the end of last year, the market was worth $498 million, and expected to grow another 30 per cent this year, according to analyst firm Telsyte.

While there are now more than 80 sites in Australia, the top eight, which include Scoopon, LivingSocial, Spreets and Cudo, generated about 95 per cent of market revenue last year.

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