Fast food restaurant Wendy’s plans Uber-like surge pricing, with digital menu boards that change prices depending on demand::The price of a Wendy’s Frosty could soon fluctuate throughout the day as the chain looks to introduce Uber-like surge pricing on its menu.
And here i thought fast food enshittification already happened
And just like that any (s)urge I had to go there ebbed and disappeared.
Good thing Wendy’s announced this today so I can ignore them forever
No seriously how do they recover from this
Dave would be disappointed!
I could see something like this being useful if it was keyed to stock they needed to get rid of. Like they have extra chili or salads, so they temporarily drop in price. They would waste less food which would make them more money, but of course that’s not how it’s being used…
There’s an app called to good to go. Check it out I use it often.
That’s exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote that!
There is no way this would hold up in my country if they are advertising prices and you get there and the price is more from a legal perspective. They would not be able to advertise if they did this. Also we don’t have Wendy’s…
Sure they can “Wendy’s lunch menu, up to X” or “Wendy’s night snack, as low as Y”
I’m hungry but can’t afford to eat right now because we are in surge pricing.
The thought reminds me of the Carl’s Jr machine in Idiocracy.
I feel like this would only work if all the other fast food places did the same thing… please, please don’t do that! Seriously, if it’s peak time like lunch, why would I ever pick Wendy’s, which is now super expensive, or just get shitty food from the other place a block away for half the price?
Also, it’s going to be even more insulting when they no longer offer the cheapest items they have today, which I will assume will never be this low again, even at low points of the day. I really hope this campaign is a huge failure and the people who pitched it are fired because I really don’t want to see a future where this is possibly the standard one day.
Apparently the backlash was strong enough, that they have announced that they have “abandoned the idea.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68427039
I suspect they’re just going to stick it in a drawer and try again in a couple years, without a massive announcement beforehand
Maybe they also looked at how much it would cost to update every Wendy’s with digital signage when they barely have enough money to staff the stores.
They will still do it as planned. They were morons for bragging about it. Papa john’s already let’s you pay like $2 or $3 during peak to have your delivery bumped to the top of the list. But they sold that as a feature Wendy’s isn’t offering you anything but the chance to get fucked over.
there’s a lesson that I learned in college that I still follow today: never eat lunch at lunchtime. unless I’m traveling I’m not eating at peak periods anyway so I really wouldn’t be affected by this pricing change.
I still don’t like it though. unless that wendy’s is the only game in town (literally) this isn’t going to be good for business.
What do you mean when you say you “learned” to not eat lunch at lunchtime? We’re you punished?
Getting lunch at 12:30: long lines, long wait times, too many people, waste most of your break time.
Getting lunch at 11:30: short lines, get food quickly, avoid the crowd, eat sandwich at a park and enjoy the sunshine.
Imagine sitting in front of stock like ticker menu. Wife yelling BUY LOW, and you watching the cents drop.
I saw that post yesterday actually. It was a cartoon posted somewhere here.
Oh! That’s what it was about. Thank you.
Diamond hands
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My local Wendys is busy often.
This just means I’ll never go. Let alone… Pretend I might?
Guess I’ll buy puts on WEN.
Great, I cannot wait for not eating it there, like I always do.
There’s a lot of talk about the backlash making them go back on their decision, and how stockholders weren’t happy seeing the consequences, but I’m wondering how many people actually went to a Wendy’s just to be nosey and ended up buying something because prices hadn’t changed and they were already there, and how many more people will go now that they know prices won’t fluctuate at all.
It almost feels like this helped them just by having people talk about it.
Their twitter guy would’ve been pretty funny with this whole thing.
