Via BuzzFeed.

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Click HERE to see a full bracket and read the initial Fast Food Bracket post explaining the seeding and rules.

Voting on these match-ups will be open until NOON eastern time on Sunday.  Who do you think will/should win these first round match-ups?

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Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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• McDonald’s 59% (566 votes) defeats Little Caesar’s  41% (397 votes).
• Dairy Queen 68% (650 votes) defeats Quizno’s 32% (302 votes).

Following up on the success of last years Meat Madness, on Tuesday So Good unveiled The Fast Food Bracket, a 32-chain tournament to determine who is the top fast food chain in America.  The first round of voting begins today, with a new match-up around noon each weekday.

Click HERE to see a full bracket and read the initial Fast Food Bracket post explaining the seeding and rules.

Today we kick things off with #1 seed McDonald’s vs. #8 seed Little Caesar’s:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Also being voted on today, #4 seed Dairy Queen vs. #5 seed Quizno’s.

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Voting will be open until noon tomorrow. Who do you think will/should win these first round match-ups?

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(Click on Bracket for larger view)

Ah March, that time of year when people put anything and everything into “bracket” form. Last year, So Good brought down the house with our wildly popular Meat Madness tournament. One full month of debates, arguments and voting, leading to some interesting final results, and ultimately, bacon defeating steak to be crowned the greatest meat in the land.  We even had some controversy along the way, as Deadspin accused an ESPN reporter of copying the idea of a meat bracket.

Rather than re-hash Meat Madness, this year So Good has returned with an all new competition: The Fast Food Bracket.

The rules are fairly simple. Over the course of the next month, So Good readers will vote, match-up by match-up, to determine what is the best fast food chain in America.  When we use the term “fast food”, we are using it loosely. These tournament competitors really fall under the larger umbrella of Quick Service Restaurants, or QSR.

Please weigh in with your predictions, intriguing match-ups and thoughts in the comments!

Here is how the participants and seeding were determined, working off last year’s list of the top 50 QSR chains:

• You must have a substantial portion of your sales come from food, specifically non-dessert foods (sorry Starbucks, Jamba Juice and Cold Stone, that means you’re out…Dairy Queen, Dunkin Donut’s, you guys have a big enough variety of food offerings, so you’re in)
• Only 32 chains are eligible. Sure, I could have done 64, but just like with Meat Madness, that would have taken forever to vote on. 32 it is. Complain in the comments about your favorite “bubble chain” that got bounced, but you’re just gonna have to deal with it.
• The top 16 chains by revenue get automatic berths, with the top 4 holding #1 seeds, next 4 holding #2 seeds, etc. Doesn’t matter how bad people think your food sucks, just like the big conferences get an edge in basketball, so do these guys.
• I combined Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. even though they are listed separately on the QSR 50 list, because they are jointly own/run. However, this did not move their seed up – tough noogies.
• After that, the seeding was at my discretion, but for the most part I stuck to the basic structure of ranking them based on revenue.
• The only chains outside of the top 32 in revenue that made the cut as “wild-cards” based on reputation and pop culture familiarity were: In n Out, White Castle and Five Guys.

Voting begins when the “real” tournament starts on Thursday, with voting on two match-ups at a time during the first round. Make sure to check back to So Good at approximately noon each day so you can vote on each of the match-ups.

Last year I heard stories from all across the country of people printing out Meat Madness brackets in their office, running an office pool or making their predictions. Glad everyone enjoyed it so much, and hope they enjoy this competition as well.

Just like with Meat Madness, voting criteria is totally up to you. Want to vote just based on which you think is the best tasting and nothing else? Go for it. Maybe you want to factor in cost? Convenience? Quality of service? Number of locations? Variety of menu options?

The choice is yours.  But one thing is clear: in one month’s time, So Good will be crowning one lucky chain as the “Top Fast Food Chain” in America.

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The Consumerist post is based off an “Infographic of the Day” post from the magazine Fast Company.  The map above appears to show a far less dominant market position for McDonald’s than many had assumed. In fact, the blogger for Consumerist notes:

I had always assumed that McDonalds’ hamburger hegemony of the United States, if not the world, was complete. I was wrong. Clearly, I need to leave the Northeast more.

Indeed, the map seems to convey that McDonald’s has extreme concentration in the Northeast, but not many other places of dominance other than a scattering of black dots across the Northwest and upper Midwest.

There’s just one problem: by making the claim that McDonald’s is not as dominant as they thought, and by failing to explain the nature of the map seen above, Consumerist (as well as Fast Company) is essentially misreading and misinterpreting the data  by failing to note the map above is labeled McDonald’s vs. Allied Competitors.

So what does “Allied Competitors” mean? It means the total number of stores for McDonald’s top 7 competitors are being added together and compared directly with McDonald’s. So if there is a black dot in the region you are looking at, i.e. the Northeast, than McDonald’s in that region has more locations than its next 7 rivals COMBINED.  In any region that is NOT black, the 7 other competitors have more stores than McDonald’s, but only AFTER you combine all their stores  into one cumulative number. In these circumstances, a black McDonald’s dot is simply ineligible to appear on the map for that location and the color of the competitor with the most locations in that region is highlighted on the map.

So let me emphasize that again: the most predominant competitor is highlighted EVEN IF THAT COMPETITOR HAS FEWER STORES IN THE REGION THAN MCDONALD’S.

What is a more interesting question is WHY did Consumerist and Fast Company both highlight this map?  The original blog that posted this visualization, WeatherSealed, provided the map you see above as somewhat of an after-thought, imagining it as a Star Wars-esque “rebel alliance” of McDonald’s competitors who are able to  “beat” McDonald’s only by collectively banding together.  In fact, WeatherSealed led off their original blog post with a map that is a much more accurate representation of just how much McDonald’s dominates vs. other fast food joints on a per-location basis:

Here we see some sheer dominance of Texas and Oklahoma by Sonic, a smattering of Burger King & Dairy Queen clusters in the Upper Midwest/Plain States, some Jack-in-the-Box love for So-Cal and Arizona and some Wendy’s strength in the Appalachian belt.  But the blasting of black across the rest of the United States outside of these clusters makes clear the control McDonald’s wields over the U.S. market based on the number-of-locations metric.

So why did Consumerist and Fast Company highlight the other map? Because it’s prettier? Has more psychedelic colors? Conveys the more interesting (although completely inaccurate) point that McDonald’s might not be as dominant as people thought? Either way, Consumerist and Fast Company appear to have done a disservice to their readers by not better explaining the context of the map they were highlighting and/or noting the more relevant map of the two.

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The Maryland/DC based burrito joint California Tortilla will be placing hundreds of $1 bills around the DC area on Thursday, March 11th with messages attached to them promoting its $5 “Fiesta Combo.”  To raise awareness of this promotion, California Tortilla is apparently going all out by: A) e-mailing me, and B) releasing the following YouTube video, which clearly must have gone the way of Avatar and run way, way over budget:

The promotion has shades of the Burger King “lost wallet” promotion, although those wallets contained anywhere from $1 to $100 as well as some “cool” paraphernalia like a drivers license for The King.  While finding a dollar with a note about a deal at California Tortilla might cause a few people to mention it to friends, I am a bit skeptical about something this small scale to generate enough word-of-mouth buzz to have a substantial impact.

What do people think? Will this promotion generate any buzz, or is this So Good post the last we’ll hear of it online?

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Via Guyism, Geekologie, Gizmodo and Lifelounge.

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Miss Michigan, Nicole Blaszczyk, perhaps with consideration for the ailing Michigan economy, decided to highlight a particular Michigan based company: Kellogg’s cereal.  While I can’t find the transcript online, and the video clips of the introduction portion on YouTube are mysteriously missing Miss Michigan, to paraphrase she came out and essentially said:

“From the birthplace of breakfast cereal and home of Kellogg’s, did you eat your Wheaties this morning?”

Cute right? And a nice shout-out for Kellogg’s. There’s just one problem: Kellogg’s doesn’t make Wheaties. It’s biggest competitor, General Mills does (which is based in Minnesota). Wheaties is also considered to be huge direct competition for one of Kellogg’s flagship cereals, Corn Flakes.  Whoops!

Seems like an innocent mistake, but she probably had weeks to work on that intro.  Wouldn’t it have made sense to make sure you were actually citing a Kellogg’s brand cereal in the intro?

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Five Dollar Buck. Let me say that again in case you didn’t realize how stupid it sounded the first time:  Five Dollar Buck.

Not only is it asinine and repetitive, it just flat out doesn’t make sense.  Nice work Taco Bell.  Apparently only the best and the brightest make the cut for jobs in Taco Bell’s product naming and copy writing department.

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Thanks to @agencyspy.

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Via Jezebel.

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CBS Standards and Practices has reviewed your proposed Super Bowl ad and concluded that the creative is not within the Network’s Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday.

Original Post:

It wouldn’t be Super Bowl season without debate over potentially controversial commercials. While the ad below is not for a food company, but rather for the gay men’s dating site ManCrunch, I thought it worthy of writing about because the pinnacle moment comes when the two featured men in the commercial have their hands brush up against each other while reaching into a bowl of potato chips – leading to an impromptu, but passionate make-out session.

Ah, hook-ups driven by food, you are an o-so-common occurrence. I mean seriously, how many times in your life have you awkwardly brushed hands with a date while reaching into a popcorn bag at a movie? Or accidentally started eating the same piece of spaghetti from opposite ends when sharing a plate of pasta (that happens in real life, not just Lady & The Tramp, right?)

The ad has not yet been formally accepted or rejected, but  ManCrunch’s PR agency has informed me that:

the site’s executives now believe CBS is intentionally postponing a final call on whether they will air the ad because they are worried about a backlash from gay and lesbian advocacy groups if they reject it.

It sounds to me like maybe ManCrunch is fishing for a story – if CBS was worried about backlash from gay and lesbian groups, wouldn’t they just accept the ad? If they are considering rejecting it, then they must have some level of concern about “pro-family” or anti-gay groups complaining or criticizing CBS if they were to air it.

So what do you think readers, should CBS reject this ad? Or is it ridiculous that they would even consider doing so?

And what do you think of ManCrunch’s intentions with this ad? Are they seriously interested in forking over the cash for this commercial to air, or are they just trying to stoke some controversy where it doesn’t exist in order to get some “buzz” online?

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