Photo: Katherine Frey/The Washington Post (Getty Images)
Usually, a restaurant doesn’t make an effort for you to visit its competitor. The ultimate goal for any business is to get you into the door to buy whatever food, drinks, or wares they are selling. That’s why Burger King’s newest Whopper promotion is so strange. The famed burger chain wants you to literally visit its biggest rival in order to get one of its best deals ever.
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That rival, not surprisingly, is McDonald’s. But Burger King doesn’t want you actually go into a Mickey D’s restaurant, they just want you to go near it in an almost taunting fashion and then leave. If you do that, they’ll give you a Whopper for 1 cent. Yes, you read that right. A Whopper for only a penny. You probably can’t even cop a Werther’s Original or one of those weird strawberry hard candies your grandma always had for a single penny.
But, there’s a little more to this deal. You can’t just go stand in front of a McDonald’s, dressed as Ronald McDonald and expect a cheap burger to be headed your way (although if you did that, the folks at Mickey D’s might toss you a Big Mac or two). If a customer goes within 600 feet of a McDonald’s restaurant while using the Burger King app, you’ll unlock your 1 cent Whopper.
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“If a guest is inside one of these geo-fenced areas and has the new BK app on their device, the app will unlock the Whopper sandwich for a penny promotion,” said a Burger King Press release. “Once the 1 cent Whopper sandwich order is placed, the user will be ‘detoured’ away from McDonald’s, as the app navigates them to the nearest Burger King restaurant for pick up.”
But, like with all good things, this promotion won’t last forever. It started on Tuesday and will only last until Dec. 12. So, the time is right to stand in front of your nearest McDonald’s for seemingly no reason to everyone who sees you.
