Fast food restaurant Wendy’s plans Uber-like surge pricing, with digital menu boards that change prices depending on demand : technology

[–] BigMikeInAustin@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Maybe workers would be able to upcharge rude customers, at least.

[–] ctkatz@lemmy.ml 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] SeabassDan@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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.

[+] IndyRap@lemmy.world -6 points 8 months ago (6 children)

God damn this is ridiculous. People need to read the transcripts it's not surge pricing.

[–] lando55@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

I haven't read the transcript of the earnings call, but I read the article(s) and the Wendy's blog post in response.

It seems like there was indeed some misunderstanding somewhere along the way, in that the "dynamic pricing" that was referenced was not to be construed as surge pricing in any way, and was intended to reflect decreased (ebb? discounted? receding?) pricing that would be presented during off-peak hours to drive business.

The practice in itself isn't inherently bad, but I can see this as an incremental move towards true surge pricing across the industry - which for the record I am against - and there isn't really a way to position it in such a way as to be seen as a benefit to the consumer.

As with everything else, customers will vote for this practice with their wallets, and by the state of several other industries in which similar models have been adopted and begrudgingly accepted as the norm, I'm not holding out a lot of hope for a positive outcome here.

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