Jill Harness
Fast Food Chain Introduces Braille Burgers
by Jill Harness - January 15, 2012 - 9:24 PM

January is National Braille Literacy Month, which is the perfect time for South African burger chain Wimpy to introduce their new braille menus. Of course, good timing wasn’t their only smart marketing move.

Because the company really wanted to make a statement, they also opted to release 15 special burgers with braille buns, each with their own special message. The company then brought the burgers to three different institutions for the visually impaired and offered the burgers to 15 different braille readers. They then recorded the people’s responses and released them in a commercial, as seen here:

See Also: The Story of Louis Braille

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Comments (11)

  1. Cool!

    posted by Chad on 1-16-2012 at 7:46 am

  2. My father was blind. Seeing all those blind people, laughing over simple hamburger buns with Braille messages written in sesame seeds, has me smiling through tears.

    posted by old hippy chick on 1-16-2012 at 8:41 am

  3. Does anyone else find it odd that a video for the blind features no voiceover?

    posted by Dave on 1-16-2012 at 11:23 am

  4. Back in the day IBM made a high speed Braille printer based on their standard 1403 model. Just change the chain and the paper and it printed Braille. Change the chain and paper back and it was back to normal. It was really pretty cool.

    posted by Ken on 1-16-2012 at 1:22 pm

  5. I wonder if this chain offers people to eat a hamburger today for payment on Tuesday…

    posted by Wayne Stevens on 1-16-2012 at 2:48 pm

  6. This is the link to the voiceover version.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nszEBLtI3qg

    I don’t think Braille at the end with the logo actually reads WIMPY. I’m not sure what they spell.

    posted by Phobes on 1-16-2012 at 4:13 pm

  7. Phobes, I believe they each spelled a different message. One said “100% pure beef.”

    posted by Jill Harness on 1-16-2012 at 4:36 pm

  8. @Jill Harness That’s not what I mean–see the logo at 2:54. It’s not wimpy in Braille, is it?

    posted by Phobes on 1-16-2012 at 5:35 pm

  9. I see where you’re talking about now…I have no idea what it says though. I unfortunately, can’t read braille.

    posted by Jill Harness on 1-16-2012 at 7:18 pm

  10. The last phrase spells whincomtowas. Makes no sense. Maybe it’s a South African word? Or maybe someone that doessn’t actually know braille wrote the ending?

    posted by Jill Andrus on 1-18-2012 at 2:02 am

  11. Good idea, really difficult to find something new for commercial, let it be..

    posted by Stiv on 1-18-2012 at 6:17 pm

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