I disagree with the glasses part as counterargument. Pizzas are sold by diameter in places that offer large and small - some even do medium. I also believe it would be nicer to have wider burgers instead of taller

Nah. If you put two plates in front of me and one had a regular burger on it and the other had a burger that was as wide as the plate itself, I'd pick the one that most accurately reflects how much I hate myself at that moment.

The A&W thing is more about Americans sucking ass at math than the difference between a wider or taller burger.

They had a 1/3lb burger and dipshits thought the 1/4lb was bigger because they don't understand fractions.

This is a dumb response. Wider is easier to fit in your mouth and doesnt fall apart. Taller is just a mess and challenge to eat

TLDR: it's not a volume issue, its a distribution

A&W tried something like this. Sold a 1/3 pound burger because its bigger than the popular Quarter Pounder sold by its competition, larger than a Whopper even. It undersold and when people were asked why; it turns out people think 1/3 is less than 1/4. By the numbers, here.

Big burgers should just be two burgers

But wider = more taste surface. See smash burgers. Taller is just... more burger to toppings ratio. Diminishing returns, imo.

In my boyfriend's hometown they used to have this restaurant that served this thing called a hubcap burger

And it was indeed, wide enough to be the hubcap of a car, while being basically flat.

I think wider is better so you don't have to unhinge your jaw like a snake to eat it.

I mean it worked for subway. Until they started skimping

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-level_task

Food for thought: a sufficiently tall and narrow burger ain't a burger anymore, when it's roughly spherical rather than roughly cylindrical it's also not a burger and if it's large and brick-like it's yet something else.

So burger is a geometrically bound dish definition.

It's not a comparison of size, it's just the formatting of the sandwich to fit better with the way the human jaw is made... What a dumb argument

It's true. I'm a bartender. When I serve a drink in a to-go cup I sometimes get people bitching "oh, that's all I get?" and then I passive aggressively demonstrate to them that it's the same as it would be in a pint glass but it's just shorter and wider.

Literally at my restaurant right now the burger with 3 smaller patties is more popular than the burger with 2 bigger patties. Same total amount of meat, just taller on a smaller bun...

Nobody said it. So be it...

A regular size, ⅓lb burger is plenty for anybody. If it was unsatisfying, use better ingredients or stronger flavours.

Thanks to pizza, even Americans are familiar with the concept of wide

Burgers should neither be taller nor wider. Just give me two normal sized burgers.