Wendy’s Wants to Start Uber-like Surge Pricing in 2025
Wendy’s Wants to Start Uber-like Surge Pricing in 2025
Wendy's will use new digital menu boards to change your burger's price based on overall demand.
They’re going to enshitify every single aspect of our lives.
Luckily, at least for now, most people can sail the high seas, or hit the secondary market, or cook the things they want in order to avoid the price gouging and enshittification. You can get ten frozen burger patties at the grocery store fairly economically in most of the country and then spice and cook them up yourself.
When Trump is reelected in November I expect it to get much worse and very fast.
most people can (..) cook the things they want
That's far from true. Millions live in food deserts and the working poor often don't have the money and/or energy for it after working extreme hours for atrociously low wages.
And that's not even taking into account those of us who are unable to cook even simple dishes for ourselves due to disability.
When Trump is reelected in November I expect it to get much worse and very fast.
That's probably true of literally everything..
If people didn't keep paying for it, it wouldn't work.
Unfortunately it's a sound business model because people will absolutely fork over the money regardless of how much they bitch about it in the process.
The enshitification will continue indefinitely until people stop buying the shit.
LOL, the asshole CEO called it an "enhanced feature".
I'd say go for it, but if Wendy's does it, everyone else will, so the likelihood that it will hurt their business is unlikely.
They're outright accepting less customers in favor of those willing to pay higher prices.
That's great for a quarter, maybe a year, maybe 5. At what point does it catch up and you've trained everyone to stop eating fast food because you wanted to charge more than people can dedicate to food?
They're outright accepting less customers in favor of those willing to pay higher prices.
This is exactly it. I have seen folks saying we are entering a new kind of economy: a kind of "whale economy". After seeing it work for mobile apps and games, other normal companies are wising up to the fact that your revenue will be the same if you charge 10 times what you were and lose 9/10 of your customers as a result... but your expenses will be lower. less labor, less equipment, less materials, less time. The 1/10 who stay and pay the high prices out themselves as "whales", the people who probably have enough money to never care and will probably just keep spending even if the prices keep going up and up and up.
The majority of us are about to become low value customers... and therefore, not have easy access to common goods and services any longer. This will make perfect short term sense to each company doing this, but will promptly collapse what's left of our economy into ruin.
I cannot fathom how no one else sees this. They're trading low-value customers for high-value customers. Sometimes this makes sense. I did it when I had a little PC repair business. Low-value customers were a PITA and didn't make me any money, not worth my time.
But maybe they're smarter than you and I? Lemmy tells me cheap fast food is a right, as if there's no other choice. If that's how people are thinking and acting, instead of shying away from fast food prices? Fuck 'em. Let them pay.
and you've trained everyone
Training is a great, important word here. There's a huge lag between setting prices and having them affect your business. Most people will try a new place once, regardless of the price. The first time they go they'll judge the price by the style of restaurant. It's not until the second time they'll factor the price into their decision. Companies only care about "training" when it goes the other way, when it's a good reputation they can liquidate through enshittification.
When they're on the downside of training all they think about is "MONEY NOW" while they're effectively scamming their customers and slowly destroying their customer base.
There's a hot chicken place near me that's having exactly this problem. The downtown, novel location in the middle of the walking market (a tourist attraction) was a bit expensive, but good. They expanded out to the suburbs, kept the downtown prices, and no longer give sweet tea for free. And somehow they're surprised that less than a year after opening they're lucky to have three customers at once. I'll give you a hint. You're charging $10 for a chicken breast on a slice of wonder bread. Chicken used to be popular because it was cheap.
https://hotchickentakeover.com/menu/
Compare to this 2005 Popeye's commercial. 11 pieces of chicken for $10. Not a single breast. Look me in the eye and tell me prices have actually risen 11x in 20 years.
Alternate timeline: Surge priced fast-food becomes a status symbol. People buy used Wendy's packaging in order to hide their homemade food and not be made fun of.
I agree it sucks. But I can understand the rationale. At peak times, if people try to go to Wendy’s, and it’s too busy, they go somewhere else. At this point the demand is higher than supply. Clearly increasing cost will create more profit.
Long term they are probably hoping that people decide to not all come in a peak times, and the peak is more spread out. This way lines are never long enough for people to just say fuck this and then leave. Less lost sales = more profit.
In reality I can see people just not going, so I agree with you that long term they see less sales. But honestly who really knows, people can be pretty irrational.
I am so MASSIVELY angrily fuckdamn violently TIRED of CEOs constantly committing capital violence and telling us it is for our own good.
I'm about half a hair away from dropping everything and moving up to our family cabin as a naked hermit living off the land.
Enshittification will continue as long as people still buy their shit there.
The only language these fuckers understand is money. Dont buy their shit and it will turn around quickly.
But if you keep going there, and keep going with the new shot they come up with they will keep doing this shit until you stop.
How many people are buying 24 packs of Coca-Cola at $14 when it used to be $7 just five years ago.
I've cut way back and only buy during sales. It's not that I can't afford it. It's that if I do continue to buy, then they'll start charging $21/case. The price will keep going up until people react.
What is it going to take for people to just refuse to pay these prices?
I actually quit drinking soda because of that. I was spending 20-30 bucks a week on Coke, and when it hit me that I could just not drink coke and save almost $1500 more a year, it was an easy choice.
why limit opportunistic gouging to airline tickets and private taxis? You want food now? Pay extra. You want hospital care now? Pay extra. You want a fire truck or an ambulance or the police now? Best not be poor.
Honestly how was *any *of this ever legal?
Isn’t this kind of the situation in America already? With people fearing bankruptcy from ambulance rides and all. Oh, and tipping for restaurants/delivery services like uber eats and instacart. While it’s going to the worker instead of the corporation (hopefully), I’ve read enough stories about food being held hostage unless a tip is given.
How about we try it with wages too, Wendy's? It's a busy time and you REALLY need me to finish a project? Well, my pay just surged, so pay up or come back later when I have nothing to do. How's that for an "enhanced feature" you greedy fucking pricks?
Don't give them ideas. They'll do it, and the lunch rush is the only time fast food workers will make $15 for a single hour. The rest of the time will be $7.25 and used to justify the ridiculously low minimum wage. "But we usually pay more than that. We need the flexibility or we'd have to cut hours!*
This is how Taco Bell wins the franchise wars.
We'd best get working on the three seashells now. Our wiping technology must improve drastically before all restaurants are taco bell.
and/or the inevitable rat burgers for the common folk
I think I'd prefer to use a bidet...
You need more fiber in your diet my fellow lemming.
< ties onion to belt >
Back when I was your age, restaurants had lunch and dinner menus with different prices.
Sit down restaurants still have lunch pricing now. Lunch is generally a smaller portion, not a lower price for the same thing.
Fast food has been priced the same throughout the day as long as I remember.
This is neither of those things. This is pricing based on current demand and charging more for the same thing just because other people want the same thing. For fast food, higher demand is generally better because the ratio of income to staff is higher than during slow periods.
This is horrifying.
Well this is one less place I will ever buy food from even if they roll back on this.
I made my last order from Wendy's over 5 years ago, when I watched them give my order to the person in front of me then tried to give me their order...and when I wouldn't take it because it wasn't right and asked for what I actually ordered, I was told that they would redo it but it would be at the end of their list, and that it was my fault they gave it to the wrong person.
Like...I had no reason to doubt that maybe this guy ordered the same combo off the menu, no unique changes to the way it came. But yeah, it's my fault for not jumping in and taking it from him.
Ended up taking me like 40 minutes to get a burger and fries, and when I finally got it, it still wasn't right, and the manager tried to lecture me about how to avoid this in the future.
As it has happened I've been able to successfully avoid another Wendy's fuck up ever since by the weird trick of never fucking going to Wendy's.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
Why not stop now? It's overpriced garbage anyway.
That was the plan
Evil product idea: track the eyes of customers and increase the price of anything they look at for 20 seconds.
Verification cans when tho?
Immediately do.
Are they trying to win a "most hated franchise" award?
Well they've already got The Most Expensive Franchise Award locked down so why not?
There isn't much traffic, we need to increase the price per order to keep our profits up.... Errr our employees "paid".
There's a rush, we need to increase the price per order because demand is so high and we want more money, errr to better pay our... Wait no we just like money.
I'm not driving to lunch when I don't know how much lunch is going to cost, gas price changes are already wild enough.
Also Wendy's isn't good enough to pay a premium for their food. I'll go literally anywhere else and be happy.
Oh shit it's 5 o'clock, I can't afford a burger now. Guess I gotta wait until 3am.
Sorry sir, you're going to be assessed a "late night" surcharge to make up for the dramatically reduced volume. It's only fair, seeing as we need to pay the employees to basically just sit around waiting for you at this hour.
There are Wendy's open at 3am?
This is definitely an MBA take.
Can't figure out how to add additional customers or create incentive to get them to spend more money? Well easy then. Take your most time crunched and trapped customer base and make them pay more.
This is simple price gouging to increase profit margins, and because it happens at whim of the business it's hard to avoid. But I bet if you get the app that lets them track you better than I'm sure they will let you know and heck even offer a discount just above the old price still.A clever way would be having the original true $1 menu be available with any purchase that includes a numbered combo but fuck originality or thinking when you have a degree that says you are right and your only thought is increase cost.
Line only goes up just like their bank accounts.
I had a recent project where we made eLearning courses for an MBA program and this is right on the money. They throw around concepts like "consumer surplus", which basically means "consumers haven't been bled dry for every penny they have", they'll do anything to get that last dollar.
Hang on let's think about this from all sides: It's probably a benevolent move by management to curb the insane overwhelm of the lunch rush!
...That way it can more easily be handled by the two gradeschool kids working double shifts to run the entire Wendy's. /s
Lol
Not sure how they think this won’t upset customers. I assume most customers won’t know there is a surge until they get to see the menu board. By the time they see it they will have already gotten in line. So they either get out of line or decide to pay. Either way I am sure they are going to leave upset. The only customers that won’t be upset are the ones that want to pay more for the same food or didn’t notice. The latter will be upset if they ever realize what happened.
Oh they're upset. They just buy it anyway. When I worked at McDonald's people would freak tf out if the thing they always got went way up in price. But like, they still bought it. That day, and everyday after. They just know even though people are pissed it's more expensive they'll still pay. Same as like shitty streaming services
oh fuck, I just realized what those dumb digital screen things they have in walgreens to replace glass fridge doors are for now. It's prep work for this.
Price discrimination should be illegal (with caveats, “student discounts” are considered PD, but not nearly as harmful as individual pricing.)
It’s a dishonest and exploitative practice, and wouldn’t surprise me that with just a few poorly selected datapoints (and with ML, every data point is poorly selected) discriminatory.
Surge pricing might not be price discrimination in the strictest sense, it’s still shitty.
That makes them untrustworthy. I won't touch any fast food any more, but I would stop going completely based on this alone. I don't support criminal behavior. The lack of deterministic fair pricing is criminal behavior.
Non deterministic pricing is going to open them up to lawsuits and defeat anything they make in the interm. There will be diversity shifts that mirror their pricing changes that will easily show prejudice.
I don’t eat Wendy’s (or really any fast food anymore), but FUCK WENDY’S. Late stage capitalism fucking sucks.
...will this actually benefit the employees?
"lol" says corporate, "LMAO"
I won't have to worry about surge pricing from the Windy's down the street from me. They're always dead and I'm amazed it's open. A "Rush" would have to qualify as more than 2 cars in the drive through lmao
Dave is ordering Molotov Cocktails, you say?
I bet they wont, or they try it and then back-peddle when their stores see a 15% reduction in sales
They wouldn't do it without crunching the numbers first.
They may lose 15% of their customers, but the ones that stay bring in 25% more money with less capital spent on labour and resources by having less customers.
The point isnt making good food for people. The point is funneling money towards the conglomerate that owns the Wendy's franchise. This is capitalism.
Strong point, have an upvoot
Another place to avoid.
TIL Wendy's is still a thing.
For nostalgia's sake (I worked there for a couple of years), I like to have a little Wendy's when I'm back in the US (they sold/merged their Japan business with another company. No frosty here). Not going to happen ever again if they do this shit.
I've been to wendy's a handful of times (I don't eat much fast food in general). Thanks to this news, I'll never consider there again.
It’s been many many years since I’ve last eaten at Wendy’s. Not sure why I’d start now.
Isn't this just a badly branded happy hour?
The sad hour
I struggle to understand the people who are angry about this one. I'm not saying it's a good business move, but it's not like it hurts the general population
With fast food, you're already paying a premium to get prepared food on demand. The people who can't or don't want to afford it can avoid the premium pricing by planning ahead and packing lunches from home.
This is basic supply and demand economics at this point. If prices go up, demand will go down as people move to other restaurants that are cheaper, or stick with groceries.
Now if it was a grocery store doing this, I would feel differently. But fast food is not a basic human need.
You're not wrong but they're still assholes. Shit like this is only explainable when you give up and accept that this capitalist hellscape is our only option.
i stopped going there when they switched to plastic cups
Haven’t been there in at least 15 years now that I think about it
So long, and thanks for all the fish sticks