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.
I might be ok with this if they also had “ebb” pricing. If I could walk in at 8pm and get a burger for a buck, it might be worth it never to go at lunchtime again.
This, of course, will never happen.
Also, does that mean the worker’s pay also scales along with the prices?
Hahahahahahahaha
No
An extra $0.25/hr during peak. Which of course is done by subtracting the $0.25/hr from the base and adding it back during peak.
No, but we’ll be expected to leave larger tips.
… tips? Yall tip at fast food places?
No, but that doesn’t stop corpos from putting the tip prompt in every goddamned pos transaction they can.
So if they raise prices at lunchtime, when everyone else is also eating (because we’re human meatbags that require food daily), they could raise prices due to the higher demand?
Yeah that’s a huge turnoff. Part of the appeal of fast food is that you know the cost of the things you like to order.
the first time someone not expecting this surge pricing finds out they have to pay more because it’s lunch time, they will not be coming back to wendys ever again
I’d be ok with it if it actually dropped below the baseline a similar amount off peak
spoiler warning: it won’t
And here i thought fast food enshittification already happened
Fast food will always be at the forefront of enshittification. Ghost Kitchens are yet another innovation that takes advantage of the fact that you, as the customer, have no idea how much of a horror show their operation is because they aren’t a physical presence you can just walk into (I guess you could pretend to be a doordasher). You have to put complete faith in the health inspector.
And just like that any (s)urge I had to go there ebbed and disappeared.
My thoughts exactly.
Though I rarely eat fast food already, this will be yet another reason not to.
Good thing Wendy’s announced this today so I can ignore them forever
No seriously how do they recover from this
They recover by everyone else realizing there’s profits to be made, and following suit. Once greedy corpo assholes come up with an idea to fuck the consumers harder, there’s usually no going back. Hopefully I’m just being cynical.
I can’t wait to be strongly incentevised not to eat out
Imma save so much money
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!
Dave would be disappointed!
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 imagine it’d be handled kind of like how McDonald’s “1,2,3 Dollar menu” doesn’t have a single item under 2 dollars in my area.
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
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.
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.
Oh. They have the money. They just don’t want to spend any of “their” profits.
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.
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
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.
I can’t imaging having to check the time before going to a fast food joint to avoid “surge pricing.” (Fast food prices are already in rip-off territory.)
Couldn’t be any easier to avoid though - we’ll just cross Wendy’s off our list entirely and problem’s solved, with absolutely no negative impact on us.
Who’s gonna go to a restaurant where they never know how much it’s going to cost? Stupid idea.
If they had discounts it would work. But we all know they aren’t having discounts.
I feel like the easiest way to stop this bullshit is for states with EBT programs to take away Wendy’s ability to charge EBT cards.
Wanna dabble with surge pricing? Fine, but you’ll lose all your customers that are on welfare.
Wow, I didn’t know that some states allow fast food to be purchased by a EBT card. Can’t get away doing that in the south.
You have to be homeless. Where are they gonna prepare food? Sidewalks aren’t exactly sanitary
I don’t think you can buy any fast food with EBT…? I’m actually surprised they let you buy soda with EBT. EBT doesn’t pay sales tax so they limit what you can spend it on.
The thing where I used to live was to use it to buy redbull then sell it outside the store.
Homeless people get the hot meals program, cause they don’t have a fridge or oven in their tent
That makes sense but I wonder if that new Wendy’s flex pricing is going to effect their eligibility to accept EBT. Is the hot meal program the one where you can also withdraw cash from EBT? (You have to prove your basically homeless and I think you even need at least one dependant to get on that program).
As far as their eligibility, I only have experience with the system in California, in which restaurant participation is not only voluntary, but subscription based. It costs each restaurant a around $250-$350 per year to lease the equipment involved. As far as I can tell, this wouldn’t affect their eligibility at all, as they don’t send itemized receipt information to the EBT office, they just send the total amount for approval.
As far as the cash benefits, no. Those are two separate programs. All people experiencing homelessness in California, ^except ^fleeing ^felons, are eligible for EBT and MediCal, but not necessarily eligible for cash benefits. In fact it’s really hard to get those benefits, even if you are disabled and cannot work. That said, the cash benefits aren’t even enough to even pay rent anywhere in California, much less the other expenses that living incurres.
I didn’t think you could get hot/prepared food with EBT? When I was on it, I couldn’t even heat up a fucking sandwich in the gas station microwave before paying for it.
Homeless people only. They don’t have a place to prepare food, so some fast food places will take EBT.
They definitely can, there’s signage all over fast food joints where I live advertising that they take ebt.
Only for people experiencing homelessness. If you have a kitchen, no hot food for you even in California.
