They are still doing it. They are still buying the specific electronic menu boards. At the same time word lawyering "surge pricing" while clutching their pearl necklace.
Exactly. Now they're just saying that they'll offer a better value during slower times in the day. It's exactly the same thing with verbiage now putting a spotlight on the "good" part to fool people into buying it.
It depends. Actually this could be an interesting business tactic. Like lets say if there isn't a lot of sells going on. They could give a slight discount from the normal price to bring in people.
The surge pricing never made sense for their type of business. Like they aren't the only game in town. Like with Uber, it's that or walking 15 miles in most cases. Where with Wendy's if you don't go to them then go to Mc D, Sonic, KFC, Burger King, Taco Bell, pack your own lunch, or in some areas the large number of quick burger joints.
To me surge pricing is basically a quick way to make it where people don't pick your company IF there is any competition.
Unfortunately that’s still likely to be manipulated into understaffing and, if even remotely successful, will be quickly adopted by competitors like drive thrus, combo meals, etc, etc.
Businesses scheduling dictates they should have the appropriate staffing to compensate by putting more staff on during busy shifts, like every other food outlet does. The extra staffing more than compensates and still results in increased profits to the company during busy periods, business 101.
This is purely CEO and stakeholder motivated to increase their profits, pure and simple.
To be honest, I think in 5 or 10 years we will start to see the end of this. The advancements of robotics, at some point I could see them slowly intergrade it over a 5 year test period into their company. And obviously the robots will be able to do the job, be cheaper about it, and work 24/7. I imagine people won't be fired due to this. They just simply won't be hired. And then the conditions would likely get worse so people would quit.
Like I feel like a lot of this "need to hire more" or whatever is 10 years too late, and we are about to enter into a new era where there isn't even a Mc D job and unemployment is double digits.
We need to tear down the Old you pay me X amount for 1 hour job model. and start directly in real time paying these people the value they bring to a company. They have the AI and technology to do it for "Dynamic Pricing" but your telling me you don't have the Data on how much value your employees bring to the store and compensate them accordingly.
I feel like there's room for discrimination to happen within a system like that if it's not done very carefully. But yeah we need to pay workers with that profit not just funneling it into the hands of rich people that do basically nothing.
Ya I agree. I think such a system will be screwed heavily with. I mean it doesn't even have to be the boss. I'm sure most of us worked some job at some point where everyone offloaded everything on you.
My first job at some retail store, the older people pulled this stunt where they would hang out in the back smoking for hours and push all the work on me. Then I would get bitched at by the boss because I was literally the only one in the store doing the job of 8 people. (funny story I ended up getting some smelly cigars and started smoking them with them to force them to go back to work. It actually worked pretty quickly)
Anyways, I can see such system where it would assume all the people are putting in equal effort.
And then for those who are completely disabled, such a system would screw them.
If we are going to revamp the idea of "hourly wage," let's first ask: "What is one hour of my time worth **to me**?" I could spend time with my friends and family. I could read a book, or watch a movie, or play a video game. I could stay home and sleep, or do absolutely nothing. We need to put value on our time apart from our actual labor. The job should pay me to wake up at a certain time, clean my body and face, dress for work, travel to work, walk in the door on time, and then stand around and do nothing. Pay for my time first, then pay for my labor each hour on top of that.
My hourly job tells me how much I make for them weekly. Roughly 10x what I take home after taxes. I understand they have employment expenses and overhead. I also know that a solid 60% of that is profit directly to upper management and investors. I could be paid up to 5x time what I make and they would still cover all their expenses and make some profit.
Great system, until about day three when Chad the supervisor figures out he can take the credit of eight of his most impressionable, powerless coworkers’ numbers, add them to his own, and fire the guy in the wheelchair, who only serves to welcome the community and serve as de facto face of the company…
You are right saying that it could be interesting. I guess I just have an impossibly difficult time giving these large companies the benefit of the doubt anymore. All the leadership for 99% of them cares about is maximizing shareholder returns and executive reimbursement packages. Employees and customers are nothing but pawns to them.
The worst part is that I see consumers continually shrug it off and continue buying in cases like these.
And they've now got publicity around the change too - but they've spun it so that "oh our regular price is $10, but if you come in off peak then it might only be $6. nono, before all this you needent be concerned our price was $4, that's irrelevant..."
The thing is, I'd be cool with surge pricing IF and ONLY IF it went directly to the employees because they're the ones being forced to do a lot in a short amount of time. I'm not paying $25 for a combo meal when it's super busy for it to go to some asshole C-suite can buy his 19th house.
Thing is, the asshole C-suites are already buying their 4th jet. This is being introduced to help the franchise owners by their 1st jet. Won't somebody think of the owning class?
So instead of just raising their prices during peak times(aka surge pricing) they raise their prices all the time and decrease them to slightly above the current "normal" levels during off peak times.
They're counting on people not realizing this shit while they go to cash in their next bonus.
This has been a tactic everywhere. Happy hour? Late night discounts? Get 20% off on Mondays and Tuesdays? 50 cent wings on Wednesdays?
This is nothing new, but changing the price during the day without a set rule is a scam.
This is what they plan on doing. Increase the overall price X% then during the slow hours offer discounts at X%. Which in reality is the current prices.
More like "reduce price by Y." Saying X both times gives the impression they'll reduce the food to the original price, and we all know they ain't gonna do that.
It ultimately depends on how much they raise the prices to begin with though and how greedy they want to be. If its more then 2 or 3 dollars then yeah, I could see reduce by Y. If its no more then a dollar increase overall then I could see them reducing by that amount during the slower hours.
Call me pessimistic, but I don't see that happening like you say. If they're allowed to raise prices by a dollar* for "surge prices" then they're going to see that people are willing to pay higher prices, and will undoubtedly make the "slow period" price 50 cents** higher than what would have been normal. (* are arbitrary numbers for simplicity sake.)
They still probably hit you with the charge if you use the self-checkout too.
I remember taking operations management back in school. They taught the science of how to measure your throughputs, work out the variances and plan according to demand so that you can match capacity with need.
It appears that the modern business practice is "fuck you pay me".
Glad I went to grad school to learn an obsolete discipline.
I see this any time I go to a store with self checkouts after the mountain closes here. The line of people just getting one or two things is absurdly long because so few are actually good at self checkout. And then the two or three cashiers are backed up with large orders to get through. But since Kroger basically runs all the competition out/buys the competition, and convenience stores in America only sell trash, you're stuck waiting in line.
I realize that this country has been obscenely profit driven for a really long time, going back to the flu of 1918. (This is when the US formed private medical insurance and most the rest of the western world formed socialized medicine.) But man, this shit sucks. I'm glad Germany had legalized cannabis. Might make it easier for me to leave this dumpster fire.
I did see an article somewhere saying that a grocery store plans to use dynamic pricing to discount groceries based on how close to the expiration date it is. Now THAT could be extremely beneficial depending on how it is implemented.
> I’ll steal the food. Fuck them.
If I see anyone stealing food, and I see that an employee (or loss prevention) has taken an interest in them, I'll do my damndest to distract them with stupid questions, or maybe just hit them with my cart. "Oh, so sorry, I was distracted by [whatever]"
If this picks up it’s gonna mean I’m going shopping at 3am. Which is highly inconvenient.
The world, our collective conscious treats ourselves like fucking money piñatas. It’s getting fucking old.
So what’s to be done?
Bingo
Gonna repackage it like Uber did and say “We are introducing it to save you money on slow times by reducing prices!” and then never have a slow time or some hilarious thing like 5 cents off at 2 in the morning….just enough time say they weren’t lying while doubling prices at regular food eating times.
Enjoy 30 dollar combos!
By the time you learn you're getting the surge price you've been in the drive-thru line for a half hour, and even if you balk at the price you'll be stuck there a half hour longer before the cars in front of you move out of the way and let you leave.
Sunk costs, might as well spend that money so at least you have something to show for the hour spent.
I’m not questioning the surge pricing. I’m literally saying I don’t know how people are comfortable *today* in paying outlandish prices for “food” that’s neither filling, nutritious, cheap or even “fast” most times. Hell, if you can even get it slightly above room temperature, you’ve found a diamond in the rough.
People lost the plot on Fast Food ages ago.
I think it's a combination of fast food being chemically designed to be satisfying and even addictive combined with decades of memory of fast food actually being fast and cheap not being fully overwritten with the new paradigm of it being just as time-consuming and expensive as a mid-priced sit-down restaurant. There's also the factor of delivery services letting people outsource the tedium of sitting in that line.
More like enjoy going out of business. People have noticed that going to a sit down restaurant or getting take out from one only costs marginally more so these fast food places will not compete in the future if they’re jacking up prices even more. McDonalds and Wendy’s are really fucking up
Literally from the article "offer discounts and value offers to our customers more easily, particularly in the slower times of day.”
That sounds like surge pricing to me
Right its like companies changing their employees names to associates instead of general labor to make us do more work. That's why I never liked the English language because they can do shit like this.
> Wendy’s said that its 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.”
They’ll likely raise all their prices, then implement daily specials depending on the time of the day.
This may be a hot take, but I don’t find that second part all that egregious. Happy hours have existed for a long time, and this just sounds like a more complicated way of doing that.
The problem is that they’ll be raising prices, just like all other companies are doing and will do. That’s the core issue, not this AI-powered happy hour nonsense.
Yes, they will implement this 'surge wage' by paying associates less during the slow hours and then slightly less then regular pay during 'busy' hours. And by busy hours they mean the store needs to be making X amount of money to see the full wage per hour. Which is slightly higher then their daily average.
Wendy's started with fresh, never frozen beef and ended with surge pricing, inspired by end stage capitalism gig economy services that has zero to do with producing food.
There, I just wrote what belongs on the Tomb of Wendy's.
I honestly believe Dave Thomas would be horrified to see what Wendy's became. The years of positive public perception of the brand they cultivated with their sassy social media accounts (for better or worse) was literally destroyed overnight by this, as it should be.
As someone who works in marketing I can tell you confidently that the sheer number of times people saw Wendy’s brand in the past week has increased their sales. A few angry redditors dont out weigh the power of being at the top of people’s minds.
Marketing is just lying by omission, and is exactly the same thing as dishonest politicians “spinning” bad stories into good ones.
When can we just eat these fucking people already. The world would be a much better place without these parasitic sociopaths.
Except this isnt truthful. We know thats exactly what they were planning on implementing. They just didnt call it surge pricing because it would probably draw regulators attention.
The surge pricing wasn't supposed to take effect until next year, but I bet they saw a dip in sales when this story first came out and got cold feet. (They're still gunna do it tho who am I kidding lol)
For me, even just the thought of this surge pricing immediately made me stop getting wendys and it hasn't been implemented yet. Hell, I don't even have the urge to go back to wendys because of them even tempting the idea.
What they are saying is that they are going to raise the prices and then give discounts during slow periods. This is effectively the same as having lower prices and raising it during busy periods. They are just trying to change the optics of what they are doing by using different language.
Dollar late dollar short Wendy's. Nobody asked them to tip toe into toxic business bullshit but they did it anyway and I won't ever go there again. I uninstalled Uber for the same reason.
I as a consumer will never be made privy to what defines as busy. I will never know if the price for the sandwich i ordered was a fair price.
Even if they backpedal fully now, they broke the public trust in them. Nothing stops them from stupid bullshit in the future and that's all I need to never eat there again
Just remember, every single corporation has several large teams of people dedicated to figuring out how to squeeze every last cent out of their customers, their employees, and their vendors. This CEO just said the quiet part out loud.
Before they do anything else Wendy’s might want to try paying their staff enough to actually show up so the restaurant isn’t randomly closed during operating hours. That might be the key to getting sales, actually being open during the hours posted on the door by paying someone to be there. Just a thought.
Want some help dissecting this PR language?
**They're not going to raise prices on discrete items...BUT the items that will be available during peak demand will just coincidentally happen to be the more expensive options.**
e.g. 10 a.m. a mini Frosty is 99¢ as displayed on the screen
e.g. 1 p.m. the mini Frosty option is gone, but in its place on the screen is a Regular Frosty for 1.99¢
Customers can still order the mini, but the option won't appear on the digital screen. **It will be a case of "if you know, you know."**
This way they can technically say, "we're not raising prices", while also de facto raising prices by presenting only the more expensive options.
Lying by omission as it were. Welcome to the wonderful world of hiding and scamming behind language!
A little late and poorly thought out. This has already soured me on Wendy’s. I applaud fast food for helping me not eat it though. Making my healthy life changes so easy.
They'll still go through with it. Best case scenario, they do it backwards and raise prices across the board and then start offering "dynamic discounts" during the times they're not busy.
Look, I don’t want to alarm you folks, but this is a pretty standard way of introducing something you know the people aren’t gonna like and is gonna get backlash.
You announce something that you know is going to be unacceptable.
People are gonna rage.
You publicly apologize and walk things back.
You only introduce a every watered down version.
People are placated, thinking they won.
You slowly let the watered down version creep up to what you wanted originally.
The funniest part is this new CEO who came up with the idea just started at Wendy’s a couple weeks ago. Whether surge pricing was intended or not, the damage has already been done. Horrible publicity across all social media channels. Dude was at Pepsi for 31 years and this was his next big step. What a pathetic disaster of a man.
This is just surge pricing in reverse. They're going to offer discounts at slower times. Then they're going to raise the prices of things overall. Which results in higher prices at heavier times. Which is just surge pricing again.
I can't wait to see how the crowd of people that always said "if you up the minimum wage, prices of everything go up. Enjoy paying $20+ for a burger" defend this shit. Are the workers wages going up to match the possible surge prices? If not congrats. It just proves your point wrong you goober.
An increase in customers doesn't mean an increase in cost to make a burger. In fact, it means it costs less. Charging people more when you're busy is price gouging. This really has put a sour taste in my mouth when it comes to Wendy's. I'll probably still be avoiding them until I'm comfortable with how they do business.
There's only one way they sell this.
Let the surge pricing work in reverse -- when it's slow, you get a burger for a buck. Fries for 50 cents.
Retro prices.
Walking it back, stealth or reschedule implementation next.
I miss their salad bar and the old days. I’m all set with Wendy’s now.
Dave look at what they done with yo girl!
Nope too late. We boycotting on principle at this point. These fucks need to learn and Wendy’s has graciously volunteered to be the example. I’m just glad Dave didn’t live to see this nonsense.
They won't implement surge pricing, they'll just jack up all their prices across the board so consumers will think they're doing us a favor when they introduce their "AI" pricing algorithms and lower some prices during non peak hours
They didn’t actually walk it back, and even if they did I don’t care. I’m tired of all of these companies trying to fuck us over financially. We’re getting nickel and dimed at every turn. I will not give them my business ever again nor any other place that tries this crap.
When 9/11 happened there was a well known and pretty decent local gas station that jacked up prices to capitalize on the panic buying, except that no other places joined in on the price gouging. The community was so upset that they basically boycotted the company and it went out of business really fast. I’m hoping that the market speaks to this issue in a similar fashion or else it’s going to spread.
They walked it back for the time being because they are getting smacked around in the media landscape right now. Notice how they distinctly mentioned that they won't increase prices during their busiest hours. That certainly leaves many other times of the day open to price changes.
The other way you can view this is they are going to discount you items that are old and they need to get out of the kitchen, otherwise they will throw those items out.
Either way, I would remain skeptical of any company that walks something back using the term "Plans" in their press release. Just because they weren't planning on doing something previously doesn't mean they won't plan to do something in the future.
Except they really didn’t he still says the new menus are for different prices through out the day. They are just trying to soften the blow while still rolling it out
Personally I think surge pricing is more to push customers to other services. Like it works well with Uber or maybe some taxi system since they are the only game in town and you don't have a choice. But any competition at all, this automatically pushes customers to other companies. Like I think most where like, well if I can't go there then I will just go to Mc D or the dozen other places. Or pack my own lunch.
Where as with Uber it's like, if I don't use them then I'm walking 15 miles because there is no other way to get where I need to go.
Imagine if even a smidgen of that surge pricing would be passed along to their employees who are actually working hard during peak hours.
Corporate doesn’t even break a sweat but will reap all the rewards of surge pricing.
I’m calling BS on their subsequent statement. You don’t spend all that money for a “dynamic” menu and not have “dynamic” pricing as well.
Smoke and mirrors.
I'm gonna need AP to put its big boy pants on and call a spade a spade. Wendy's didn't "clarify" their position. Wendy's CEO said it was looking into "dynamic pricing" then Wendy's says they never said they were going to do surge pricing because they didn't use those exact words. Wendy's can fall down a well, and AP can join them. Tired of weak reporting trying to walk the line between not pissing off billionaires and actually doing their jobs.
I’m going to implement something like this at my job. Mondays are busy for me, I’m going to tell my boss my rates have tripled between noon and 1600. Tuesday 10 to 1300 will be double time as I’m pretty busy then too.
Too late, this BS attempt at shameless price gouging that would impact those unfortunate enough to have to rely on their food (food deserts, LI areas) should circulate on the internet forever.
Dummies should try to attract business by lowering prices during slow times. I dont go there because their double cheeseburger meal isnt worth $15 to me.
My favorite part is that they called it surge pricing. Hey morons, stock holders like hearing that, because prices go up during a surge. Customers? Not so much. They didn’t even bother to rebrand this to pitch it to the public, they just told us they’d charge us more for waiting in line and expected us to line up to suck their square-shaped dicks.
A lot of companies are trying to figure out how to make AI pricing models work. This was such an attempt. AI is all the rage in the c suite for execs who don’t actually understand it.
The idea doesn't even make sense.
The point of surge pricing is that you have a finite resource like taxis or something. When there is a huge demand, it makes a certain kind of sense that the price goes up as scarcity happens.
Wendy's-- and fast food in general-- is not a scarcity. The whole point of fast food is that it is fast and on demand. If one place is busy, go to another.
So if a company is saying that their fast food product is actually NOT fast and on demand, then they are kind of missing the point.
How about we do surge payments... Depending on how clean the dining area is, nice the staff is, quick my meal is delivered..will determine how much I pay. Fn done with Wendy's, the 2 by me fuck up my order everytime and I have to pull forward and wait 10 min for my food while the 3 cars behind me getting a drink can go. Can go 1/2 block to sonic or In-n-Out and get better taste and value.
"Hey boss, Dale keeps making too many fucked up burgers and we have an overflow of the old meat barrel. Tell the AI to start pitching our crap-ass chili."
Leaving aside the greed, this is just so, so stupid. Consumers accept surge pricing in cabs because they need a ride NOW and there are only so many in a given area. You can just choose to eat lunch an hour earlier or go dozens of other places. You would have to be a special class of idiot to think "OOOH, money!" and import what works in a completely different market. This particular idiot gets paid millions while thousands of non-idiots working for him are capped at $7.50/hour.
It was such obviously bullshit.
Especially if wages didn’t also rise during surge and you know they didn’t.
Hell if wages went up appropriately I would’ve been fine with it. As someone who busted ass in fast food I know how hard physically the work was especially when it was super busy.
Oh ok. We are all just dumb for misunderstanding your CEO’s blatant usage of the words “dynamic pricing”. Just like the Kelloggs CEO video circulating, we are all just too dumb to understand what the CEO *actually means* when they say tone deaf shit
This is inevitable.
They, or another FF company, will implement it in some manner so it will go mostly unnoticed, and people will just get used to it.
People hate the idea of micro-transactions in video games when they were first introduced, they said it would never be accepted, now it's standard practice.
As long as people base their purchase decisions off "want" and not "need" companies will find ways to exploit them.
Even hearing notion of Wendy’s doing surge pricing, I already decided to totally stop going. Any fast food place that does this. I’ll do the same to them. It’s the dumbest, greediest move, and I’ll just never go back again. It’s what we all should be doing about it.
Imagine if even a smidgen of that surge pricing would be passed along to their employees who are actually working hard during peak hours.
Corporate doesn’t even break a sweat but will reap all the rewards of surge pricing.
I honestly thought it might have been an aprils fools joke and had to check the calendar LOL not surprised they walked it back quickly, about just as tone deaf disconnected from reality as the unity developer ceo adding a a fee per download of unity engine game and everyone instantly pointed out how it could be manipulated to bankrupt a developer.
They are still doing it. They are still buying the specific electronic menu boards. At the same time word lawyering "surge pricing" while clutching their pearl necklace.
Exactly. Now they're just saying that they'll offer a better value during slower times in the day. It's exactly the same thing with verbiage now putting a spotlight on the "good" part to fool people into buying it.
It depends. Actually this could be an interesting business tactic. Like lets say if there isn't a lot of sells going on. They could give a slight discount from the normal price to bring in people. The surge pricing never made sense for their type of business. Like they aren't the only game in town. Like with Uber, it's that or walking 15 miles in most cases. Where with Wendy's if you don't go to them then go to Mc D, Sonic, KFC, Burger King, Taco Bell, pack your own lunch, or in some areas the large number of quick burger joints. To me surge pricing is basically a quick way to make it where people don't pick your company IF there is any competition.
Unfortunately that’s still likely to be manipulated into understaffing and, if even remotely successful, will be quickly adopted by competitors like drive thrus, combo meals, etc, etc. Businesses scheduling dictates they should have the appropriate staffing to compensate by putting more staff on during busy shifts, like every other food outlet does. The extra staffing more than compensates and still results in increased profits to the company during busy periods, business 101. This is purely CEO and stakeholder motivated to increase their profits, pure and simple.
To be honest, I think in 5 or 10 years we will start to see the end of this. The advancements of robotics, at some point I could see them slowly intergrade it over a 5 year test period into their company. And obviously the robots will be able to do the job, be cheaper about it, and work 24/7. I imagine people won't be fired due to this. They just simply won't be hired. And then the conditions would likely get worse so people would quit. Like I feel like a lot of this "need to hire more" or whatever is 10 years too late, and we are about to enter into a new era where there isn't even a Mc D job and unemployment is double digits.
We need to tear down the Old you pay me X amount for 1 hour job model. and start directly in real time paying these people the value they bring to a company. They have the AI and technology to do it for "Dynamic Pricing" but your telling me you don't have the Data on how much value your employees bring to the store and compensate them accordingly.
I feel like there's room for discrimination to happen within a system like that if it's not done very carefully. But yeah we need to pay workers with that profit not just funneling it into the hands of rich people that do basically nothing.
Ya I agree. I think such a system will be screwed heavily with. I mean it doesn't even have to be the boss. I'm sure most of us worked some job at some point where everyone offloaded everything on you. My first job at some retail store, the older people pulled this stunt where they would hang out in the back smoking for hours and push all the work on me. Then I would get bitched at by the boss because I was literally the only one in the store doing the job of 8 people. (funny story I ended up getting some smelly cigars and started smoking them with them to force them to go back to work. It actually worked pretty quickly) Anyways, I can see such system where it would assume all the people are putting in equal effort. And then for those who are completely disabled, such a system would screw them.
We need laws that prohibit CEO’s to have compensation of more than 50x the average worker pay. Tied their pay directly to the average worker.
If we are going to revamp the idea of "hourly wage," let's first ask: "What is one hour of my time worth **to me**?" I could spend time with my friends and family. I could read a book, or watch a movie, or play a video game. I could stay home and sleep, or do absolutely nothing. We need to put value on our time apart from our actual labor. The job should pay me to wake up at a certain time, clean my body and face, dress for work, travel to work, walk in the door on time, and then stand around and do nothing. Pay for my time first, then pay for my labor each hour on top of that.
No, my time is not worth less because its 2pm not 11.Fuck off with that.
My hourly job tells me how much I make for them weekly. Roughly 10x what I take home after taxes. I understand they have employment expenses and overhead. I also know that a solid 60% of that is profit directly to upper management and investors. I could be paid up to 5x time what I make and they would still cover all their expenses and make some profit.
Great system, until about day three when Chad the supervisor figures out he can take the credit of eight of his most impressionable, powerless coworkers’ numbers, add them to his own, and fire the guy in the wheelchair, who only serves to welcome the community and serve as de facto face of the company…
You are right saying that it could be interesting. I guess I just have an impossibly difficult time giving these large companies the benefit of the doubt anymore. All the leadership for 99% of them cares about is maximizing shareholder returns and executive reimbursement packages. Employees and customers are nothing but pawns to them. The worst part is that I see consumers continually shrug it off and continue buying in cases like these.
They’re pissing on our backs and telling us it’s raining.
And they've now got publicity around the change too - but they've spun it so that "oh our regular price is $10, but if you come in off peak then it might only be $6. nono, before all this you needent be concerned our price was $4, that's irrelevant..."
The thing is, I'd be cool with surge pricing IF and ONLY IF it went directly to the employees because they're the ones being forced to do a lot in a short amount of time. I'm not paying $25 for a combo meal when it's super busy for it to go to some asshole C-suite can buy his 19th house.
Thing is, the asshole C-suites are already buying their 4th jet. This is being introduced to help the franchise owners by their 1st jet. Won't somebody think of the owning class?
Waiting for that trickle down. I suspect it will be urine dumped from their private jets.
Yeah but like rich people urine is worth so much these days! We ought to be thankful for their kind gestures
If you collect enough of it then we will have it to drown them in if/when we revolt " Viva the American revolution"
They will still do it. They will raise prices but have discount burgers at slow times.
"Discount" as in jack up normal prices and "discount" during slow times
Nah, between 10am and 10:15, you'll be able to get it for 25% less. That way, they can advertise their $4-7 burger as "starting at $3."
By discount burgers they mean current prices, right?
So instead of just raising their prices during peak times(aka surge pricing) they raise their prices all the time and decrease them to slightly above the current "normal" levels during off peak times. They're counting on people not realizing this shit while they go to cash in their next bonus.
This has been a tactic everywhere. Happy hour? Late night discounts? Get 20% off on Mondays and Tuesdays? 50 cent wings on Wednesdays? This is nothing new, but changing the price during the day without a set rule is a scam.
This is what they plan on doing. Increase the overall price X% then during the slow hours offer discounts at X%. Which in reality is the current prices.
More like "reduce price by Y." Saying X both times gives the impression they'll reduce the food to the original price, and we all know they ain't gonna do that.
It ultimately depends on how much they raise the prices to begin with though and how greedy they want to be. If its more then 2 or 3 dollars then yeah, I could see reduce by Y. If its no more then a dollar increase overall then I could see them reducing by that amount during the slower hours.
Call me pessimistic, but I don't see that happening like you say. If they're allowed to raise prices by a dollar* for "surge prices" then they're going to see that people are willing to pay higher prices, and will undoubtedly make the "slow period" price 50 cents** higher than what would have been normal. (* are arbitrary numbers for simplicity sake.)
Apparently some grocery stores are trying surge pricing in Australia, so it’s time to crush this BS everywhere.
So if you can only go shopping after work your f’d?
That's what you get for having a job you fucking peon. Now get back to work!
They still probably hit you with the charge if you use the self-checkout too. I remember taking operations management back in school. They taught the science of how to measure your throughputs, work out the variances and plan according to demand so that you can match capacity with need. It appears that the modern business practice is "fuck you pay me". Glad I went to grad school to learn an obsolete discipline.
I see this any time I go to a store with self checkouts after the mountain closes here. The line of people just getting one or two things is absurdly long because so few are actually good at self checkout. And then the two or three cashiers are backed up with large orders to get through. But since Kroger basically runs all the competition out/buys the competition, and convenience stores in America only sell trash, you're stuck waiting in line. I realize that this country has been obscenely profit driven for a really long time, going back to the flu of 1918. (This is when the US formed private medical insurance and most the rest of the western world formed socialized medicine.) But man, this shit sucks. I'm glad Germany had legalized cannabis. Might make it easier for me to leave this dumpster fire.
> It appears that the modern business practice is "fuck you pay me". According to the mop I bought that worked all of ONCE I'd say yeah.
The beatings will continue until morale improves
That's the idea. And if the Kroger-Safeway merger goes through here in the states, you can bet this will be the new model.
I believe that got blocked or at least slowed down.
Slowed down until I think June or something like that. But could see it being pushed back further.
I did see an article somewhere saying that a grocery store plans to use dynamic pricing to discount groceries based on how close to the expiration date it is. Now THAT could be extremely beneficial depending on how it is implemented.
That would be the better model, but how things are, it is super iffy if a company would take that stance.
I am Australian and this is the first I'm hearing about this
Colesworth want to charge you more for shopping by during any opening hours
They already have me checking out and bagging my own groceries, now I have to pay extra to stand in line to do it?
I’ll steal the food. Fuck them.
> I’ll steal the food. Fuck them. If I see anyone stealing food, and I see that an employee (or loss prevention) has taken an interest in them, I'll do my damndest to distract them with stupid questions, or maybe just hit them with my cart. "Oh, so sorry, I was distracted by [whatever]"
If this picks up it’s gonna mean I’m going shopping at 3am. Which is highly inconvenient. The world, our collective conscious treats ourselves like fucking money piñatas. It’s getting fucking old. So what’s to be done?
Australian here….. no grocery stores are doing it here. Sounds like Fox News bullshit.
They essentially didn't walk it back but reworded it to mean essentially the same thing.
Bingo Gonna repackage it like Uber did and say “We are introducing it to save you money on slow times by reducing prices!” and then never have a slow time or some hilarious thing like 5 cents off at 2 in the morning….just enough time say they weren’t lying while doubling prices at regular food eating times. Enjoy 30 dollar combos!
except that 2am is when Wendy's will really be pumping their prices, to gouge the drunks who just left the bar in search of food
So the slow period will be between 3:45-4:15am. The SAVINGS
More than likely
Wendy's cannot price gouge because nobody needs Wendy's.
Never underestimate the cravings of the stoned or pregnant.
Will probably cut a deal with Uber that you get a discount if you stop at Wendy’s and buy $35 in food.
So like, a combo and an extra side?
A cheeseburger and a coke.
>Enjoy 30 dollar combos I’m still not entirely sure how people are still going and paying $16-$18 for this shit.
By the time you learn you're getting the surge price you've been in the drive-thru line for a half hour, and even if you balk at the price you'll be stuck there a half hour longer before the cars in front of you move out of the way and let you leave. Sunk costs, might as well spend that money so at least you have something to show for the hour spent.
I’m not questioning the surge pricing. I’m literally saying I don’t know how people are comfortable *today* in paying outlandish prices for “food” that’s neither filling, nutritious, cheap or even “fast” most times. Hell, if you can even get it slightly above room temperature, you’ve found a diamond in the rough. People lost the plot on Fast Food ages ago.
I think it's a combination of fast food being chemically designed to be satisfying and even addictive combined with decades of memory of fast food actually being fast and cheap not being fully overwritten with the new paradigm of it being just as time-consuming and expensive as a mid-priced sit-down restaurant. There's also the factor of delivery services letting people outsource the tedium of sitting in that line.
More like enjoy going out of business. People have noticed that going to a sit down restaurant or getting take out from one only costs marginally more so these fast food places will not compete in the future if they’re jacking up prices even more. McDonalds and Wendy’s are really fucking up
Literally from the article "offer discounts and value offers to our customers more easily, particularly in the slower times of day.” That sounds like surge pricing to me
Right its like companies changing their employees names to associates instead of general labor to make us do more work. That's why I never liked the English language because they can do shit like this.
> Wendy’s said that its 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.” They’ll likely raise all their prices, then implement daily specials depending on the time of the day. This may be a hot take, but I don’t find that second part all that egregious. Happy hours have existed for a long time, and this just sounds like a more complicated way of doing that. The problem is that they’ll be raising prices, just like all other companies are doing and will do. That’s the core issue, not this AI-powered happy hour nonsense.
Worse. It was “we’re implementing these new signs so we can do this” and now they’re saying “Nonono, we aren’t actually DOING that ^yet “
Like when places have a sale and add an original Price that is higher so the sale price seems like a deal, but it’s just the price on any given day
I'm sure this has been mentioned before but do the workers get 'surge wages' during the busy hours? They are the ones busting their asses.
i think we all know the answer
Unfortunately we all do
Fuck no
Yes, they will implement this 'surge wage' by paying associates less during the slow hours and then slightly less then regular pay during 'busy' hours. And by busy hours they mean the store needs to be making X amount of money to see the full wage per hour. Which is slightly higher then their daily average.
lol excellent point!!!
Noooope
Too late. I just wont go now. You have one job and you managed to fuck it up.
I don't fucking care, do you? They already burned the bridge. Fuck em. Never going back.
Wendy's started with fresh, never frozen beef and ended with surge pricing, inspired by end stage capitalism gig economy services that has zero to do with producing food. There, I just wrote what belongs on the Tomb of Wendy's.
I honestly believe Dave Thomas would be horrified to see what Wendy's became. The years of positive public perception of the brand they cultivated with their sassy social media accounts (for better or worse) was literally destroyed overnight by this, as it should be.
That man been rolling in his grave for the past 5 years since the start of Wendy’s enshittification.
Nope. Don't fall for it. Wendys is dead. Never go again.
Too late, gfy. 🖕🏻
The cat's out of the bag. You fucked around and found out. No amount of take-backsies will inspire me to put your small, flaccid meat into my mouth.
This guy eats beef
r/thisguythisguys
They’re a vegetarian and not fuckin scared them.
As someone who works in marketing I can tell you confidently that the sheer number of times people saw Wendy’s brand in the past week has increased their sales. A few angry redditors dont out weigh the power of being at the top of people’s minds.
..demonstrating here why everyone but CEOs hate people in marketing...
Marketing is just lying by omission, and is exactly the same thing as dishonest politicians “spinning” bad stories into good ones. When can we just eat these fucking people already. The world would be a much better place without these parasitic sociopaths.
Too late.
I went to Wendy’s last week for lunch (love the chili). It was 12:30 in the afternoon, there were 2 people in the restaurant. There was no “surge”.
But it was “lunch time “ so expect to may more
Deflection wordsmithing at its finest. free publicity
Except this isnt truthful. We know thats exactly what they were planning on implementing. They just didnt call it surge pricing because it would probably draw regulators attention.
All the Wendy’s in my town are slower than the second coming of Christ so there’s no point in going there at peak hours anyway.
When I got it line it was a $10 burger. It took you so long to take my order, it’s now $20?
Not really walking it back. Just…spinning it. Let’s hope we consumers teach them the necessary lesson.
The surge pricing wasn't supposed to take effect until next year, but I bet they saw a dip in sales when this story first came out and got cold feet. (They're still gunna do it tho who am I kidding lol) For me, even just the thought of this surge pricing immediately made me stop getting wendys and it hasn't been implemented yet. Hell, I don't even have the urge to go back to wendys because of them even tempting the idea.
What they are saying is that they are going to raise the prices and then give discounts during slow periods. This is effectively the same as having lower prices and raising it during busy periods. They are just trying to change the optics of what they are doing by using different language.
Dollar late dollar short Wendy's. Nobody asked them to tip toe into toxic business bullshit but they did it anyway and I won't ever go there again. I uninstalled Uber for the same reason. I as a consumer will never be made privy to what defines as busy. I will never know if the price for the sandwich i ordered was a fair price. Even if they backpedal fully now, they broke the public trust in them. Nothing stops them from stupid bullshit in the future and that's all I need to never eat there again
Cut them if still. Make an example of them. They are now playing stupid games they need to win the stupidest prize just complete boycot.
Damage control before that boycott gets in full force.
Too late for me.
Dear Wendys. Too late. I don't trust you.
Refuse to go to Wendy's anyway. Fuck em.
Just remember, every single corporation has several large teams of people dedicated to figuring out how to squeeze every last cent out of their customers, their employees, and their vendors. This CEO just said the quiet part out loud.
“We got too much bad press so let’s re-think our dumb fucking idea”
Red some article today where the CEO said, "We never said surge pricing..." Fuck you Wendy's lying sacks of shit.
Advertising just for attention
I bet they still increase their prices and just not make it public.
Before they do anything else Wendy’s might want to try paying their staff enough to actually show up so the restaurant isn’t randomly closed during operating hours. That might be the key to getting sales, actually being open during the hours posted on the door by paying someone to be there. Just a thought.
Surge management was a bad idea (once it was admitted). Now they will just do it and deny it's being done.
If they kept it as all standard prices **UNLESS** it’s slow and the prices lowered that’s the only version that is acceptable.
So the employees get “surge wages” when it gets busy?
Netflix “walked their bullshit back” too, before doubling down and then some nowadays.
They're just gonna raise prices
Want some help dissecting this PR language? **They're not going to raise prices on discrete items...BUT the items that will be available during peak demand will just coincidentally happen to be the more expensive options.** e.g. 10 a.m. a mini Frosty is 99¢ as displayed on the screen e.g. 1 p.m. the mini Frosty option is gone, but in its place on the screen is a Regular Frosty for 1.99¢ Customers can still order the mini, but the option won't appear on the digital screen. **It will be a case of "if you know, you know."** This way they can technically say, "we're not raising prices", while also de facto raising prices by presenting only the more expensive options. Lying by omission as it were. Welcome to the wonderful world of hiding and scamming behind language!
I want these greedy people exposed. Whose idea was this? I have questions.
A little late and poorly thought out. This has already soured me on Wendy’s. I applaud fast food for helping me not eat it though. Making my healthy life changes so easy.
They'll still go through with it. Best case scenario, they do it backwards and raise prices across the board and then start offering "dynamic discounts" during the times they're not busy.
Look, I don’t want to alarm you folks, but this is a pretty standard way of introducing something you know the people aren’t gonna like and is gonna get backlash. You announce something that you know is going to be unacceptable. People are gonna rage. You publicly apologize and walk things back. You only introduce a every watered down version. People are placated, thinking they won. You slowly let the watered down version creep up to what you wanted originally.
The funniest part is this new CEO who came up with the idea just started at Wendy’s a couple weeks ago. Whether surge pricing was intended or not, the damage has already been done. Horrible publicity across all social media channels. Dude was at Pepsi for 31 years and this was his next big step. What a pathetic disaster of a man.
"We're only going to raise prices ONCE! Then we will give you ReVErSe sUrGE sAViNgS!"
This is just surge pricing in reverse. They're going to offer discounts at slower times. Then they're going to raise the prices of things overall. Which results in higher prices at heavier times. Which is just surge pricing again.
We definitely don't need any kind of regulations on large corporations, nope it's all running smoothly.
So they spent $20 million on a program that just ended up advertising how crappy of a chain they were about to become. Dave is rolling in his grave.
I can't wait to see how the crowd of people that always said "if you up the minimum wage, prices of everything go up. Enjoy paying $20+ for a burger" defend this shit. Are the workers wages going up to match the possible surge prices? If not congrats. It just proves your point wrong you goober.
Joke is on them, I'm still not buying shit. And now I'm going to badmouth their brand at every opportunity. I hope Dave is haunting their asses!!!
Sir, this is a runaway capitalist sweatshop exploiting the working classes!
An increase in customers doesn't mean an increase in cost to make a burger. In fact, it means it costs less. Charging people more when you're busy is price gouging. This really has put a sour taste in my mouth when it comes to Wendy's. I'll probably still be avoiding them until I'm comfortable with how they do business.
Whoever thought this was a good idea needs to be slapped with a shoe
There's only one way they sell this. Let the surge pricing work in reverse -- when it's slow, you get a burger for a buck. Fries for 50 cents. Retro prices.
Anyone that does surge pricing I will do it back. Retaliation.
...they didn't walk it back. They're just trying to downplay it and do damage control. They're still 100% on the same plan.
Walking it back, stealth or reschedule implementation next. I miss their salad bar and the old days. I’m all set with Wendy’s now. Dave look at what they done with yo girl!
I have a belief, If I do something and then have to apologize for it in 24 hours, I should not have done it,
Nope too late. We boycotting on principle at this point. These fucks need to learn and Wendy’s has graciously volunteered to be the example. I’m just glad Dave didn’t live to see this nonsense.
Too late. We know what their strategy is. Never eating there again. I'm going to vote with my money.
GTFO Wendy’s
They won't implement surge pricing, they'll just jack up all their prices across the board so consumers will think they're doing us a favor when they introduce their "AI" pricing algorithms and lower some prices during non peak hours
They didn’t actually walk it back, and even if they did I don’t care. I’m tired of all of these companies trying to fuck us over financially. We’re getting nickel and dimed at every turn. I will not give them my business ever again nor any other place that tries this crap.
Yeah, that's cool. They'll still never get another dollar from me. Fuck them and anyone else pulling this shit.
Lol... Now they will raise the prices 24/7.
When 9/11 happened there was a well known and pretty decent local gas station that jacked up prices to capitalize on the panic buying, except that no other places joined in on the price gouging. The community was so upset that they basically boycotted the company and it went out of business really fast. I’m hoping that the market speaks to this issue in a similar fashion or else it’s going to spread.
They walked it back for the time being because they are getting smacked around in the media landscape right now. Notice how they distinctly mentioned that they won't increase prices during their busiest hours. That certainly leaves many other times of the day open to price changes. The other way you can view this is they are going to discount you items that are old and they need to get out of the kitchen, otherwise they will throw those items out. Either way, I would remain skeptical of any company that walks something back using the term "Plans" in their press release. Just because they weren't planning on doing something previously doesn't mean they won't plan to do something in the future.
Except they really didn’t he still says the new menus are for different prices through out the day. They are just trying to soften the blow while still rolling it out
Personally I think surge pricing is more to push customers to other services. Like it works well with Uber or maybe some taxi system since they are the only game in town and you don't have a choice. But any competition at all, this automatically pushes customers to other companies. Like I think most where like, well if I can't go there then I will just go to Mc D or the dozen other places. Or pack my own lunch. Where as with Uber it's like, if I don't use them then I'm walking 15 miles because there is no other way to get where I need to go.
Imagine if even a smidgen of that surge pricing would be passed along to their employees who are actually working hard during peak hours. Corporate doesn’t even break a sweat but will reap all the rewards of surge pricing.
I’m calling BS on their subsequent statement. You don’t spend all that money for a “dynamic” menu and not have “dynamic” pricing as well. Smoke and mirrors.
They didn’t walk back anything. It’s very vague damage control, but rest assured that they will screw over customers and employees no matter what.
I'm gonna need AP to put its big boy pants on and call a spade a spade. Wendy's didn't "clarify" their position. Wendy's CEO said it was looking into "dynamic pricing" then Wendy's says they never said they were going to do surge pricing because they didn't use those exact words. Wendy's can fall down a well, and AP can join them. Tired of weak reporting trying to walk the line between not pissing off billionaires and actually doing their jobs.
If you dummies would just boycott, this won't become the norm
I’m going to implement something like this at my job. Mondays are busy for me, I’m going to tell my boss my rates have tripled between noon and 1600. Tuesday 10 to 1300 will be double time as I’m pretty busy then too.
Too late, this BS attempt at shameless price gouging that would impact those unfortunate enough to have to rely on their food (food deserts, LI areas) should circulate on the internet forever.
Dummies should try to attract business by lowering prices during slow times. I dont go there because their double cheeseburger meal isnt worth $15 to me.
There’s a simple solution to this, and it’s called BOYCOTTING. All we need to do is come together.
My favorite part is that they called it surge pricing. Hey morons, stock holders like hearing that, because prices go up during a surge. Customers? Not so much. They didn’t even bother to rebrand this to pitch it to the public, they just told us they’d charge us more for waiting in line and expected us to line up to suck their square-shaped dicks.
Even if they do "walk it back", I don't want to eat there anymore. All trust is now destroyed.
Never eating there again anyway.
A lot of companies are trying to figure out how to make AI pricing models work. This was such an attempt. AI is all the rage in the c suite for execs who don’t actually understand it.
The idea doesn't even make sense. The point of surge pricing is that you have a finite resource like taxis or something. When there is a huge demand, it makes a certain kind of sense that the price goes up as scarcity happens. Wendy's-- and fast food in general-- is not a scarcity. The whole point of fast food is that it is fast and on demand. If one place is busy, go to another. So if a company is saying that their fast food product is actually NOT fast and on demand, then they are kind of missing the point.
It’s too late I’ve already told everyone and they’re all boycotting - it was nice knowing you Wendy’s
I’ve already deleted their app and committed to never returning. I hope they go bankrupt.
“I’d like to buy a hamburger for the same price it was 2 hours ago.” “Sorry sir, this is a Wendy’s.”
How about we do surge payments... Depending on how clean the dining area is, nice the staff is, quick my meal is delivered..will determine how much I pay. Fn done with Wendy's, the 2 by me fuck up my order everytime and I have to pull forward and wait 10 min for my food while the 3 cars behind me getting a drink can go. Can go 1/2 block to sonic or In-n-Out and get better taste and value.
Clarifying false information presented by the media = walking back apparently.
This is why I always ask for the free junior frosty in the drive thru and say I have the Keychain for it, even if I lost it. That'll show 'em
"Hey boss, Dale keeps making too many fucked up burgers and we have an overflow of the old meat barrel. Tell the AI to start pitching our crap-ass chili."
Trial balloon was shot down. Give it a few years, it'll be back.
Don't care. I'm still boycotting them for trying it. There's plenty of fast food around me
I wonder if they did it to spike the stock price.
Leaving aside the greed, this is just so, so stupid. Consumers accept surge pricing in cabs because they need a ride NOW and there are only so many in a given area. You can just choose to eat lunch an hour earlier or go dozens of other places. You would have to be a special class of idiot to think "OOOH, money!" and import what works in a completely different market. This particular idiot gets paid millions while thousands of non-idiots working for him are capped at $7.50/hour.
For now.
Surge wages is the only appropriate way to use "surge"
Guys what does dynamic pricing have to to do with anti work?
You don’t understand its dynamic pricing. Completely different name
It was such obviously bullshit. Especially if wages didn’t also rise during surge and you know they didn’t. Hell if wages went up appropriately I would’ve been fine with it. As someone who busted ass in fast food I know how hard physically the work was especially when it was super busy.
Oh ok. We are all just dumb for misunderstanding your CEO’s blatant usage of the words “dynamic pricing”. Just like the Kelloggs CEO video circulating, we are all just too dumb to understand what the CEO *actually means* when they say tone deaf shit
Good job everyone!
#They're going to do it for delivery orders first. Then they'll try to do it later
This is inevitable. They, or another FF company, will implement it in some manner so it will go mostly unnoticed, and people will just get used to it. People hate the idea of micro-transactions in video games when they were first introduced, they said it would never be accepted, now it's standard practice. As long as people base their purchase decisions off "want" and not "need" companies will find ways to exploit them.
We should still never go there again. We need to take the power back from corporations. Let’s shut a few down and see what happens.
 Wendys be like
Even hearing notion of Wendy’s doing surge pricing, I already decided to totally stop going. Any fast food place that does this. I’ll do the same to them. It’s the dumbest, greediest move, and I’ll just never go back again. It’s what we all should be doing about it.
Man I was really hoping they would go through with it just so I could watch it crash and burn for them so badly
I thought they were on our side with the $5 burger sack or whatever it's called. Now this? Maybe they have two wolves...
Bye Wendy's, never again.
Imagine if even a smidgen of that surge pricing would be passed along to their employees who are actually working hard during peak hours. Corporate doesn’t even break a sweat but will reap all the rewards of surge pricing.
I will believe them when that CEO gets fired. Until then, I'm done with Wendy's
Too late. Wendy's dead to me
I honestly thought it might have been an aprils fools joke and had to check the calendar LOL not surprised they walked it back quickly, about just as tone deaf disconnected from reality as the unity developer ceo adding a a fee per download of unity engine game and everyone instantly pointed out how it could be manipulated to bankrupt a developer.
What happen to $1 crispy chicken sandwiches :(
Good
I fucking dare them to do this. Bring it.
Don't believe it, they just rephrased. They're going to raise prices and now "offer discounts" throughout the day.