Wendy's to add surge pricing to menu items.

I wonder why they announced their plans to increase? Seems like they would have been better off just doing it and announce lower prices/deals for slow times of the day after the ‘surge’ was in place. A positive spin is always better.
 
Dawg52 said:
I wonder why they announced their plans to increase? Seems like they would have been better off just doing it and announce lower prices/deals for slow times of the day after the ‘surge’ was in place. A positive spin is always better.
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Perhaps so they can be in the headlines getting free advertising for a few days then release a statement like, "We've listened to our valued customers and will not be going forward with surge pricing. Please accept this coupon for 50 cents off."
 
SC State Parks started doing this several years back... and it P### a bunch of folks off. One trip our extra day was a 75% increase!
As far as fast food joints.... I may have hit them 6 times since I retired.
 
This is straight up loonie in my opinion. Do they have a new CFO? The marketing person must be locked in a closet, pounding on the door trying to get out.

This has some finance driven consulting project written all over it. Some 13 year old consultant pointed out that they aren’t very busy at 1037a and 413p and if they could implement dynamic pricing through their app notifications they could win .371% more business in the coveted blah-blah segment for a .027% increase in NPS and 0.19% improvement in burger sauce margin by compressing inventories. The 2025 long range plan was shaky so someone baked this into the business plan and redirected 6 months worth of IT spending to enable it.

Or some corporate BS like that.

Meanwhile the marketing person is yelling “No!! People hate uncertainty! They are already really mad about inflation! I know we won’t use this for discounts! We will use it to anger our best lunch customers! The competition will have a field day making fun of us!”

What a load of nonsense.

I once started a new year only to discover that our genius finance guy closed a last minute budget gap by cutting the funds for a supplier on a contracted product. We literally couldn’t stop the payments nor could we just get rid of the customers using the product. He tried to dump it in my lap … so I dumped it in the GM’s lap … who then dumped it back in finance’s lap who then …

And this is why I pursued FIRE!

(Of course, DoorDash is a complete mystery to me.)
 
old medic said:
SC State Parks started doing this several years back... and it P### a bunch of folks off.
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It might have outraged some people but campgrounds are still full. Hotels have been doing surge pricing for years. It's not going away.
 
It's a regressive tax, right? The unfortunate hourly worker who gets kicked off the clock at noon, eats now or doesn't eat. Headline: Wendy's paints a target on those who can least afford it!
 
Wendy's says the press got it wrong. That never happens!

In his analyst call the CEO said dynamic pricing, which the press changed to surge pricing like Uber. It never made sense any other way.

"To clarify, Wendy’s will not implement surge pricing, which is the practice of raising prices when demand is highest. We didn’t use that phrase, nor do we plan to implement that practice," a spokesperson said in an email to NBC News. They added there are "no plans" to raise prices at high-demand times.
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https://news.yahoo.com/wendys-start-testing-uber-style-094524758.html
 
Call it "dynamic" or "surge", it's the same thing. When and how are customers going to encounter higher prices? How are customers going to know they're paying more? A customer is not going to know if the fries were $0.40 cheaper and the burger was $0.80 cheaper when they came at 3pm last week.

But just like the post above who paid $15 for a meal...you just examine the value proposition and never go back. I'm buying brown bag futures.
 
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Thanks for the link. It's good to have first-hand information from the company, even if it is a lot of BS corporate-speak. First, I noticed:

Tanner explained that they plan to invest about $20 million to “roll out digital menu boards to all U.S. company-operated restaurants by the end of 2025...”

The digital boards are meant to improve order accuracy and increase sales by upselling certain menu items.
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I hate those digital advertising/menu boards. I don't want to be "upsold" to. I want a simple list of prices so I can comparison shop. Of course the displays are carefully timed so that you can't do that. By the time you've figured out the screen layout, and before you can compare prices, it flips to a video advertisement.

Then there was the backpedaling on the initial (more honest) press release:

Digital menu boards could allow us to change the menu offerings at different times of day and offer discounts and value offers to our customers more easily, particularly in the slower times of day
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Note careful use of the word "could" and the down-playing of the rest of the possibilities, such as surge pricing (even if by another name.) Yeah. Sure. They could do something to benefit the customer. I'm not holding my breath.
 
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My wife pointed out to me that places already do this sort of thing, they just call it happy hour, where prices are cheaper, then prices go back up during busy times.
 
Surprise, surprise. We have more access to news than ever, and more inaccurate reporting than ever.

And more people read and believe misinformation than ever. :(

There will be less discussion now, than there was when we all thought Wendy's was implementing surge pricing.
 
ABC weather guy last night gave his commentary on this. "so you're going to make me wait longer & pay more for my lunch, right..."

They're not getting any good publicity from this in DFW.
 
Regarding avoiding fast food, we only use fast food when traveling and then it's whatever is closest to the hotel we stop at. But we've started bringing along an assortment of freeze dried meal pouches (Mountain House). Boil some water in the room microwave and 10 minutes later we have a hot meal. The meals are expensive, but way cheaper than McD's for two people. Generally $7 for a two serving pouch. Costco had them on-sale about 6 weeks ago for $5-6 per pouch.
We keep 6-8 of them in the emergency car kit.
 
Ha, the OP linked article was stealth edited to drop ...similar to ride-sharing companies...

Not sure if they changed the headline too.
 
During my working years, I ate at Wendy's often because it was my favorite fast-food place and I needed the food quickly. Since I ERed in late 2008, I have very rarely eaten there, and never since 2015.

I don't need to have food prepared for me that quickly any more (yay!). I have the time to eat at not-quite-FF places like Shake Shack or other places like that where you have to wait a few minutes longer for your burger but they are fresher and better than typical FF places. I prefer pizza, anyway, if it's lunchtime.
 
There is a chain here called Bob's Burgers and Brew which is a sit down and be served type burger joint. Night and day difference between the quality of the food over Wendys but really not that much more expensive now lol.
 
sengsational said:
It's a regressive tax, right? The unfortunate hourly worker who gets kicked off the clock at noon, eats now or doesn't eat.
Headline: Wendy's paints a target on those who can least afford it!
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First murder my kid worked only a few weeks out of the police academy was the result of a dispute between a worker bee coming off shift & their manager...at a Wendy's.

Though that worker bee ended up shooting another worker bee, not the manager.

Kid avoids fast food on-duty because he doesn't want any 'extras' added to his food while wearing the uniform.

Preferring instead a few family-owned (& family-run) places where police/fire in uniform get half-off.
 
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CaptTom said:
Thanks for the link. It's good to have first-hand information from the company, even if it is a lot of BS corporate-speak. First, I noticed:



I hate those digital advertising/menu boards. I don't want to be "upsold" to. I want a simple list of prices so I can comparison shop. Of course the displays are carefully timed so that you can't do that. By the time you've figured out the screen layout, and before you can compare prices, it flips to a video advertisement.

Then there was the backpedaling on the initial (more honest) press release:



Note careful use of the word "could" and the down-playing of the rest of the possibilities, such as surge pricing (even if by another name.) Yeah. Sure. They could do something to benefit the customer. I'm not holding my breath.
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SO they are doing what McDonalds does. Use the App, or login and get rewarded for doing so. I think their advertising worked. Any publicity is good publicity?? Maybe not today, but I doubt the folks who love Wendy's will change their habbit until they are priced out.
 
Latest news reports, board chair has overridden CEO, says no surge pricing.
 
closet_gamer said:
this has some finance driven consulting project written all over it. Some 13 year old consultant pointed out that they aren’t very busy at 1037a and 413p and if they could implement dynamic pricing through their app notifications they could win .371% more business in the coveted blah-blah segment for a .027% increase in nps and 0.19% improvement in burger sauce margin by compressing inventories. The 2025 long range plan was shaky so someone baked this into the business plan and redirected 6 months worth of it spending to enable it.
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bingo
 
OldShooter said:
Latest news reports, board chair has overridden CEO, says no surge pricing.
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What a surprise. They must have read this thread. From NPR https://www.npr.org/2024/02/28/1234412431/wendys-dynamic-surge-pricing
To clarify, Wendy's will not implement surge pricing, which is the practice of raising prices when demand is highest," Wendy's Vice President Heidi Schauer said in an email to NPR. "We didn't use that phrase, nor do we plan to implement that practice."

Wendy's didn't provide many additional details, but it said in a separate statement that the digital menus could allow the company to offer discounts to customers during slower times of day.
Click to expand...
 
Reminds me of when I was a columnist for a daily newspaper. I never got to write my own headlines because the paper had a dedicated group of a few guys whose only duty was to write all the headlines.
Reporters and writers would frequently complain to the editors about headlines that were only vaguely related to the text of the articles and sometimes even flat out wrong.
The editors could do nothing about it because the headline writers had a union job and were well protected.
 
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