everything in the world is getting worse in the stupidest way possible for the worst reasons!!!
will employee wages be dynamic based on demand! of course not!
will employee wages be dynamic based on demand!
Don’t give them ideas like that.
That already exists, is called zero-hour contracts and hourly wage.
Next step after that - AI identifying you as you drive up, looking up your income and price tolerance values from their data broker and displaying the max price it thinks you will stomach
Login to LinkedIn to view pricing
-fast food companies, 2025
Agree?
I’m Ron Burgundy?
In other news grocery bags of frozen burger patties can be had for cheaper than an actual combo meal…
Watch how quick these burgers become artificially scarce.
This presumes that there is demand for Wendy’s.
Yeah, I can’t wait to get free Wendy’s all the time.
Is this why my Texas Double went from 1.79 to 3.19 in the course of a week? I just stopped going there completely.
Fast food is just too expensive for what you get now. You used to be able to get some cheap food there. Now it’s expensive, but still cheaply made.
McDonald’s app has been doing this fun thing over the last year or so where they’ll suck you in with good deals that repeat a few times, then change them for the worse.
Remember when McDonald’s had a 99 cent menu and you could get a Taco Bell taco for 59 cents?
Yeah, at this point you may as well go upmarket. That’s why they’re going all in on being “car food” because that’s the last niche that would make someone go
Spent over fifty dollars at shake shack last week treating two friends. Just another place crossed off the list.
Easy way to lose customers.
It’s never going to get cheaper than it is currently.
If I don’t know what it costs, how can I budget for it? If I can’t budget for it I’m not going to drive over to check out the prices, fuel “fluctuations” have seen to that.
If anything shouldn’t they be charging more during the slower hours?
Basic supply and demand economics. When supply is high and demand is low, prices fall. When demand is high and supply is low, prices rise. They think people will willingly sit in line regardless of the price because, in reality, people have.
Conversely, they wouldn’t want to drive people away when business is slow and can easily jump into another drive thru.
Food is a very price sensetive industry. If you rip someone off after making them wait they’ll go elsewhere and never come back
This is how I act, I don’t complain, I leave a poison review and then never go back. Sometimes I tell people about it for years.
Exactly, I hold grudges against food places for years. Conversely, I’ll frequent good places for just as long.
It never has to go long for non-chain places. They always go out of business so we can’t be the only ones. I bet this is really common.
I do the same thing when we have garage sales and multiple groups show up all at once
So, are they raising wages for those surge times as well or providing bonuses for the workers that work harder? No? Just more bottom line?
Now introducing #SurgeWages, get paid less when you’re not working during lunch/dinner rush!
Working for tips, then?
It won’t happen but if they could really demonstrate this improved employee retention and improved moral for their lowest paid workers I wouldn’t be against it. Like I said it won’t happen. This is clearly yet another fucking cash grab and just adds to the misery that is modern life.
So basically scalpers on fast food chains, right?
I’m going to reserve judgement until this is verified by a better source. This is the NY Post referencing a DailyMail article. Neither of those two sources inspire confidence, and they’re both classified as tabloids.
NY Post MBFC: Medium Credibility (honestly, surprised it’s that high)
Daily Mail MBFC: Low Credibility
It was on the earnings call
Daily Mail MBFC: Low Credibility
I’m surprised the Daily Heil is that high…
This is a restaurant news service that talks about it. Not sure how credible it is, but it seems more credible than the Post and the Mail.
https://www.nrn.com/quick-service/wendy-s-expects-test-dynamic-pricing-and-daypart-offers-2025
Thanks. So it seems like it does have some truth to it. Damn.
All the stuff in the article sounds expensive and unnecessary. Like, just bring back Yellow Wendy’s.
The AI menu thing is just baffling.
Haha I was just about to say wtf are “AI-enabled menu changes”?
It’s less baffling when you realize 90% of AI is thrown in needlessly by pointy-haired bosses just because it’s trendy.
New way to kill 5 minutes of their 20 minute quarterly presentations.
It’s already like $12 to eat the basic meals there. What are they trying to bump it up to during these “surges?”
Squeeeeze those customers! More! The executives need more moneyyy!!!
Does this mean Wendy’s restaurants should have a lighted sign at the road that changes like gasoline prices showing the current price of a burger?
Nah. You’ll just be expected to flip through all the different fast food apps and check prices on your phone while you drive around the travel plaza. Good luck, pedestrians.
I don’t get the point of ordering by app if you have to go through the drive-through line anyway. I mean I know why they want you to do it, but I don’t understand why anyone would.
I don’t “app” at all and have turned around and left multiple restaurants when asked to scan a QR code for a menu.
I’m 100% with the boomers on this one.
If the QR code takes me to a PDF or the restaurant’s webpage, that’s one thing. But if it takes me to the app store, I give up.
That’s still a step further than I’ll go. If my phone is required to be involved with the ordering process at all, it’s a dealbreaker (unless I’m ordering takeout over the phone that is, lol)
Ugh. The kid was desperate to go to this restaurant called The Sugar Factory, which has insane milkshakes. The menu was a QR code and it linked to a pdf of the paper menu they no longer had that you just had to zoom in and scroll around on. It was like 4 pages long too.
Also, it was totally not worth going to. Overpriced and not good.
That’s good info. A friend in NJ won’t shut up about them, so I’d for sure end up going there the next time I visit.
I’m lactose intolerant, but will (and have) absolutely power through the pain for a good milkshake. Gotta pick my battles with dairy.
I think I might be lactose intolerant. Like I can eat a bowl a cereal with milk no problem, and even ice cream is okay. However, cheese and (for god knows what reason) milkshakes will make my stomach go wonky.
But like you, I’ll happily drink a milkshake and suffer the consequences later. Fuck cheese tho, it tastes nasty to me.
I also have a stone fruit allergy, but every once in a while a peach is so good that I’ll eat one feel less than ideal afterward. Worth it.
Vegan milkshakes are good now
I don’t know what I was expecting with a name like The Sugar Factory but my blood pressure spiked looking at this picture.
I did not get one of those. I stuck with booze.
I’d drink alcohol too if I was here…
Burger King’s Whopper Wednesday deal is only available if you order through the app. The regular price is like three times as much.
But I will say, I’m finally coming around to the fact that it’s not worth it at any price.
You’re paying for it in another way- by letting them harvest your data.
I mean I wouldn’t go to Burger King either way, but that’s why they have that deal.
I pretty much only use the apps if I can.
There’s basically always some deal I can save a few bucks on. Easy to see any new menu items ahead of time. Coordinate the whole family order with all the customizations. Easier communication at the order box. There’s also usually some built-in rewards program.
Doesn’t the data mining bother you though?
My data has some value, but I can’t sell it, might as well get something for it. Using apps, I get like $200+/yr.
So that shows you that obviously your data is worth much more than $200/yr.
Oh god my nightmare is having an app for everything
Eh, I don’t like interacting with people, so I’ll take any chance to minimize it, if not eliminate it entirely. So I use the app to specify how I want my burger (and my kids’). I’d rather do curbside, but if that isn’t an option, just giving a name or code at the intercom is better than having to repeat things 3 times and/or wonder if they heard me when they don’t say anything…
I’ve found it helps with accuracy. Especially when ordering for a family of 5. Plus it’s nice to pass my phone around and have people input their orders, rather than trying to blurt it all out at a drive thru speaker.
That’s a reasonable response for transparent pricing
There’s a sketchy af gas station near me where they have a $0.899 advertised “gas price” sign. Only instead of “regular” or premium gasoline that it’s advertising on the sign, it instead says “fountain” for fountain drinks, despite those signs universally displaying gasoline prices instead.
That sign there clearly indicates fountain drinks are $0.899 per GALLON
Bring a hose and tank for your syrup water.
I boycott places like that. Even if it’s two prices for cash/credit, no and fuck you. You just lost a customer forever. Considering my fuel tank is 55 gallons that’s actually significant.
There’s one near me that only advertises the price with car wash. So the sign shows what you pay per gallon if you also decide to spend an extra $15 on a shitty automatic car wash. WTF??
Goddamn a shell station did that to me 5 years ago and I’m still so salty about it that i actively avoid shell to this day.
I’m petty
Auxiliary fuel tank? That’s 25% larger than the biggest passenger vehicle I’ve driven.
I full time in a 30ft RV.
Also, if I’m stopping for gas I’m usually coming in to buy some other stuff too. Or I could go down the street and spend my money there.
I’d bet they also have blaring adverts at the pumps.
This you?
I think i passed that sign on my way to Florida last year, it caught my eye as well
This reminded me of a now closed taphouse near where I used to work that would increase the cost for each of the beers/ciders their served based on a formula of how much they had in stock and the rate of sale. They hired a full stack dev to design a stock style tracking app and they wanted to somehow gamify beer cost for their primary audience (local tech bros).
That lasted about a month before they abandoned it completely (and I hired the guy that made their app for a CRM my company was building). They went to normal prices that don’t change minute-to-minute and the place lasted another 10 years.
That was First National Taphouse or something like that, right?
Yeah, on Broadway. It was like 2 blocks from my office but I didn’t really pay attention to it until after the market pricing thing ended.
As I remember it, a variant of that tracking software went on to power the keg tracker at the Bier Stein.
Where I’m from a trap house is another name for a crack house. So I was a little confused at first.
Intersting. I’m not sure I’ve heard crack houses called that… I’m also not really up to date on that sort of thing.
Tap houses are common in Oregon. They have a couple dozen or more craft and/or imported beer/cider (and sometimes mead) on tap. They usually serve food and sell by the glass but they also sell growlers to go. Ostensibly they’re there to fill growlers, but most in my area are basically bars for foodies.
The name tap house for a place with stuff on tap makes perfect sense. It’s not common where I’ve lived before, hence me always reading it as trap house. Those are very common.
Must be one of those scams where the C-Suite gets a major payday for destroying a company.