Wendy’s has spoken to its manager after suggestions that it plans to introduce “surge pricing” to its menu received a decidedly frosty response this week, with the company scrambling to clarify that it has no intention of making itself the Uber of fast-food chains.
“Online fury” is a most excellent expression.
Online furies uave been awakened and now you can’t stop them, Wendy’s!
I always assumed it was easier to awaken online furries
Better knot try
Fuck. I wanted cheap off-peak hour burgers. Yall, we could have had cheap burgers, but you wanted to pay full price I guess?
Lmao, you thought there would be times it would be cheaper than now? Nah. It would baseline where it is now, and become more expensive when people actually want to eat.
It would be cheaper at first to promote the idea, then would quietly go back to normal and go up from there.
It would be cheaper at first to promote the idea
That’s a pretty charitable take for a multi billion dollar company.
I wonder why they think it’s a good idea. Maybe it’s for people who live in small towns and have minimal options? Where I live there are so many better options around me that are healthier and cheaper. I very very rarely get fast food.
And, even if I do get fast food, Wendy’s is an absolute last resort. I think I’ve only had their food once in the last two decades.
Don’t worry, they’re going to a subscription burger based model. You’ll have to pay them each month to enter the restaurant.
We did it, Lemmee!
People are ignorant af. Surge pricing is exactly the same as offering a discount on prices during the less busy times and suddenly people are ok with it. “Our businesses surge from 1030-1300 and 1700-1900 so we’re gonna charge $15 for the meal that’s normally $13.” Is the same exact situation as: Xyz economic situation is causing us to raise prices across the board, so we’re gonna now charge $15 for this meal. Oh wait business is slow, offer them a discount outside of these hours: 1030-1300 and 1700-1900.
Nah, one way means the bar is fixed at a specific price and you may get lucky and pay less. The other way means there is no bar and you have no idea what you might pay until after you’ve already spent 10 minutes in line and get up to the counter/intercom.
Nobody wants to take that gamble when you could just drive to one of the other dozen nearby burger places that don’t do stupid shit like this.
Bullshit. They will roll it out in two years when everyone has forgotten. Just to be on the safe side I will probably never eat there again
Too late shithead, shove your square burgers right up your ass which is convenient because now you can eat them yourself
As a show of good faith, fire your CEO.
Removed by mod
Which only happens if enough people are disgusted and stop spending money there.
Unfortunately I don’t see that happening because most of the world is too busy with other shit to care.
… out of a cannon.
Into the sun.
Dont. Fuck. With. WENDY TESTABERGER!
now that it’s over, and i know it’s different bc it’s not a starvation wage mega corp, but remember when a bar in michigan did exactly this? i remember reddit being so enamored with this
Oh man I’ve been there, great bar.
What part of having the greed of capitalism invade your fun time makes it great, exactly?
market pricing is simply a tool that can be misused haha. it has never been exclusive to capitalism and of itself has nothing to do with greed.
i understand that you have good intentions but please learn how to have fun before attacking people on the internet.
What bar isn’t run by greedy shitbags?
I hate bar culture. Everyone who frequents bars complains about “needing” more money, then they spend it on $7 shots while the entire bottle is $11.
$4 beers (plus tip) when the entire case is $15.
Just another shining example of useful idiots being taken for a ride without even realizing it.
Seems fun as a novelty, and it happens at a specific stated time of day. Dynamic pricing by a fast food chain makes no sense, especially when the schedule isn’t disclosed, except to scam unwitting customers out of their money.
I totally agree.
It’s fun as a novelty. Not when it’s an excuse for the business to gouge you even harder.
When you’re crazy busy in the kitchen (of a crappy restaurant), you sandbag. Meaning you prepare extra food than is needed because you know the order is coming so you’re cooking in anticipation of the next order. If by “surge pricing” they would discount during the chaos, they’d probably make more money. I haven’t been to Wendy’s in quite a while but when I saw the story break a few days ago I said to myself “I’m completely done, fuck those greedy assholes”
You sandbagging soon of a bitch!
I think this was a publicity stunt. We’d all just about completely forgot Wendy’s exists… So they come out with this wild idea, let it float for a couple of days and then cancel it. Smooth PR move.
Did people forget Wendys existed? They have one of the biggest brand engagements on social media of all time.
There’s no Wendy’s near me, and I don’t follow their social media. I pretty much forgot they existed for a few years until I heard about this pricing idea.
Oh well if you forgot about them, then everyone else must have too.
Totally agree. In what world would even the most out-of-touch executive think customers would be happy about this? Not to mention the logistical nightmare it would cause when the guy in front of you in line is paying a higher/lower price or the price changes halfway through waiting in line, or the price changes in the middle of your order.
It was a really dumb idea that couldn’t have gone anywhere, but was useful to drum up a little controversy and publicity.
Yeah, surge pricing is meant to discourage usage as there is too much demand. Most restaurants will never have this problem. One exception I found was the unveiling of the new popular restaurant here in my area that had 24 hour service times. They eventually had to change it to close a few hours at night for staff to clean and restock. The change was 3 days after grand opening. Drive thru was so full it reached the big streets and the highways off ramp. It was dumb af. I liked the closing idea more than surge pricing.
In fact they could do a happy hour specials that mimic this surge pricing but the advertising will be to highlight lower price times. which theoretically should act the same as surge pricing by making times of high demand “normal”/higher prices.
That was my first thought after the reversal (probably slower than many, it seems like such a stupid idea) yup cheap publicity. Mean who would risk going to Wendys if the price could go up while in line?
In the end there’d probably be little surge pricing because people would avoid any hours it might hit. If I am hitting up Wendys I am not keen on paying more, especially since Taco Time is in the same parking lot, McDonald’s across the street and a KFC within a block. To be fair I can’t remember the last time I wanted to hit up a Wendys anyways, Taco Time is way better for the same trip.
Though I’ve thought about Wendys more, with these two articles and wrote a reply, than in years…so I guess marketing works.
I’m so jealous you have Taco Time… crispy burritos, stuffed mexi fries, surprise flavor empanadas… sigh. The closest one is eight and a half hours from me. 😩 I’d pay surge prices for Taco Time.
Bad pr is better than no pr?
Late stage capitalism in its essence
So to clarify, they’re saying that they’ll roll it out in ‘25 or so. And that it will be only used for discounts.
What they’re not sayin, is that they’re going to take the year to jack prices to 3x normal- incrementally so people won’t notice all at once.
Then they will offer discounts- 50%, maybe.
So even the discounted price will still be 1.5x more costly, while the surge pricing is 3x.
Further, they’ll probably tie the discounts to app use; an app which invades your phone and gives them shitloads of data.
Tl:dr: Wendy’s CEO thinks we’re all dumb.
This is exactly what Sonic does with drinks. They used to have a half price afternoon window, but now I believe you have to use the app to get it (not 100% sure, their food is garbage)
I haven’t been to Sonic in ages.
there’s an old not-chain drive-in diner near here that’s a thousand times better. (and I mean, like it’s been around long enough to have been one of the OG’s.) IIRC, the only thing I really liked was their ice.
It will be the anti surge. Just charge prices 3x higher but if you own the app and come in between 1pm and 5pm you can get 50% off. I hate this “own the app for discounts” but this is 100% what will happen. Id be willing to wager my sons entire life on this.
I’ll take you up on that wager.
Tl:dr: Wendy’s CEO thinks we’re all dumb.
People still purchase Wendy’s, he’s got good reason to think that.
What’s wrong with them going currently? They haven’t/never even made the change. Most probably have no idea
Wendy’s food turned to crap when Dave died. Like that same week.
I think they hired the CEO of Unity
Yeah, I wasn’t going to go there. He’s probably right. At least about enough of their patrons to make more money
I mean in the CEOs defense most people are fucking dumb. I mean just look what happened to jcpenney, their CEO decided let’s stop with the bullshit no more fake sales no more fake prices everything is the real price on the sticker and it almost bankrupted them.
People were so stupid that they would go to the store across the mall to buy the exact same pair of pants that JCPenney was selling for $20 normal price at $40 “half off” because brain stupid likes the shiny discount sign
it doesn’t help that they have an entire army of Doctorates specialized in the psychology of marketing just to bypass your reasoning for emotion.
our brains are designed to process emotion before reason on account of evolution so it’s not as simple as to say “people are dumb”… even if… people are dumb.
Welcome to the McDonalds app.
an app which invades your phone and gives them shitloads of data
Their app isn’t too bad (at least for now). It has enough data collection that I wouldn’t want to download it, but it just strait spyware like some fast food apps cough McDonald’s.
Speaking of things that the McDonald’s app has access to, I just double checked mine on Android and it has permissions to access your pictures and files by default, I’m sure it was part of that thing that you just select through in order to access the app but that’s kind of concerning can understand location, files is a little weird
The earlier version required access to all your files to even start. They did update it to not need that anymore. But if you already had it installed with access to files, it kept that access.
But, yes, that’s completely unacceptable they required that at all.
It’s tracking location.
That’s a pretty massive red flag for an app that has exactly zero need for it.
It’s for store finding. While you and I might not use it a lot of people do.
Sure it is. I believe you.
(Or is it that store finding is the excuse?)
I have set it as “Ask me everytime” and only used it when I needed to locate a nearby McD. Recently the “Deals” stopped showing up as it required location data with precision setting turned on. So, if I need to use the Deals I need to share my location which shows that they are mining your data for the deals. I kill the app after I order as they don’t need to track me from my home to the restaurant.
I think all CEOs think their clientele are dumb. It’s literally the only real requirement to be a CEO, besides already being rich and knowing the right people.
The CEO should be fired. Thousands of restaurants already have variable, demand based pricing, but no one cares because those restaurants call it “happy hour”.
The working class economy: 💀
Wendy’s: We’re raising prices!
People: 😡
Wendy’s: Wait, that makes you mad?
