Burger King has (or had) its Halloween Whopper with A.1. Sauce baked into the bun. Arby’s is now advertising a sandwich with A.1. Sauce on it. Is this a new trend? Will we be seeing more fast food places making sandwiches with A.1. Sauce? Was this initiated by Kraft Foods?
My guess would be artificial “sriracha style” marketing. Sriracha got popular from the bottom up. It’s hugely popular now and on all sorts of stuff, but for a long time it was the cool, hip thing because it was relatively unknown. I would bet A1 is trying to recreate that, only from the top down. Get the product into national chains, and hopefully it will become a cool thing and trickle down into increased sales at the bottom end.
Corporate marketing was my first thought.
Never thought about it that way. Sriracha was just something on the tables in Little Saigon where we’d go for lunch. Like the fish sauce.
Ketchup is 30% sugar. I welcome an alternative to it. I think the A-1 brand has potential.
Isn’t A1 Sauce already (and long) much more popular than sriracha (in US)?
It seems to me that this A1 stuff comes and goes. I remember it being plugged maybe a decade or so ago, but there does seem to be another wave of it going on. The Whataburger chain, for instance, has had an A1 burger since the late 90s, and Jack Links has had their A1 Beef Jerky for at least five years. I don’t quite get the appeal behind making the bun itself with A1, but I do like A1 used judiciously (though I prefer other brown sauces like HP because they’re not quite as “sharp” and overpowering as A1.)
Personally, I would say yes. I grew up in the 80s, and A1 was pretty much a staple in any household that ate steak, at least in my neck of the woods. It feels to me like in the 90s its popularity began to wane a little bit, but I’d guess far more Americans are familiar with A1 than sriracha.
Yes. But it’s only in the last couple of months I’ve heard of the A.1. bun at Burger King, and only in the last couple of days I’ve heard of the Arby’s sandwich with A.1. Sauce. The condiment is very well known, but this new marketing effort seems to be aimed at getting people to try it on something other than steak.
I guess that’s why I asked the question. A.1. Sauce is already popular, and AFAIK they’re selling a bunch of it. So why is it suddenly showing up in two fast-food chains?
I’m waiting for them to push Heinz 57 sauce.
It adds zing!!
Have you ever heard of a company that thinks it’s selling enough of its product and has no interest in increasing sales?
I have a bit of inside knowledge on the topic; we had A1 as a client at an ad agency at which I used to work.
A1 is the leading steak sauce brand in the US, but most people who buy it don’t use it very often. For a number of years, they’ve tried different tactics to increase usage (and, thus, get people to buy replacement bottles more often).
One tactic is to convince consumers that it can be used for more than steak; another tactic (which is what they seem to be doing in working with Burger King and Arbys; they’ve also done things with Culver’s) is to get their brand visible at fast-food restaurants, so that people think about the brand name more often.
Odd. A1 now seems like a relic to me. At the risk of coming off as some kind of foodie, even sub-optimal cuts of meat are flavorful in ways that a strong condiment like A1 would just overwhelm. I’d have misgivings about using it even on a London Broil or cubed steak, both of which do pretty well with just salt, pepper and garlic.
A1 already has a version with tobasco sauce in it - wonder how long it’ll take until there’s one with Sriracha?
A-1 has a long history of branding like this. Red Robin has had an A-1 peppercorn burger on the menu for as long as I’ve been going there.
It could be this is the result of a specific new initiative, but the general strategy is not new to A-1.
From my personal perspective: it’s smart to be focused on burgers. I think A-1 ruins a good steak, but it’s amazing on a burger.
I would guess that it is the reverse. Rather than using crappy fast-food burgers to sell A1, they are using the enduring popularity of A1 to try to save declining sales of fast-food burgers.
It’s not like A1 on a homemade burger is a new idea.
It is good on ground beef. But I have a different idea of a ‘burger’. 
I remember the A-1 ads from the 80s (maybe 90s?). “A Hamburger’s not chopped ham. It’s chopped steak.”
I think this was part of the move away from A1. A bunch of people started to say/feel/hear that using it was essentially admitting that you had a crap piece of meat that you had to put sauce on to be decent and a “real” steak would need no such assistance.
There may be some truth to that but, you know, maybe someone just likes A1.
How much sugar is in A1?