Its worth noting that the reason this happened is because management bought out the company from Unilever. They were able to switch to a long term vision, then transformed and succeeded.
Just goes to show that the boardroom can absolutely hobble a good management team.
Yes, as an American when I was driving across Alberta I was absolutely astounded by how many A&Ws there were and how nice they seemed. At least in my corner of the US, A&W has a thorough reputation as a cheap, lame has-been that's usually tandemed with other failed fast food brands. The only one I know of in the state regularly garners comments that "wow, that still exists?" when driving by.
In Canada, on the other hand, it seems to be a major and well-liked brand... As much as I found the slogan "American food" very funny given their reputation here.
There used to be a A&W in my home town that finally closed in 2017. For awhile durning some kind of ownership tranfer the franchisees were mostly left high and dry and that place became the best 'fast food' burger in town. I think I remember that the franchise owner basically started buying everything from other suppliers and was only buying a few things from upstream A&W (notably root beer). He pivoted his burgers to compete on quality with the other fast food in town, i think that all went to shit a couple of years later presumably when he either sold or got smacked down the the franchise. Either way it's kind of one of those 'zombie brands' now .. slowly succumbing to economics.
