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Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is an Economic Indicator

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Re: Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is an Economic Indicator

#31

Post by LanceH »

erichurkman wrote: post #25
filmgirlcw wrote: post #13

Apologies for the off-topic comment — I’m not really sure if the Popeyes sandwich is an indicator of anything, but it’s a damn good sandwich. My trash food friends and I drove nearly an hour (sans traffic it would’ve taken 20 minutes) to one of the only Popeyes in the Seattle area on Wednesday. There was a small line but a very long wait for food (understandably! It was similar to Shake Shack at lunch — lots of peopl…

I live around the corner from the Chick-fil-A just outside the Fulton St station. They have a snaking line inside _and_ a roped off line outside. A line to wait in line, and the outside line often is 40, 50, 60 people plus. I suspect some of those people waited as long as you did end to end, for a chain chicken sandwich in one of the culinary capitals of the world. To someone who hates lines, that's mind boggling!

No lines on Sundays.

Re: Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is an Economic Indicator

#32

Post by tenpies »

cco wrote: post #23
filmgirlcw wrote: post #13

Apologies for the off-topic comment — I’m not really sure if the Popeyes sandwich is an indicator of anything, but it’s a damn good sandwich. My trash food friends and I drove nearly an hour (sans traffic it would’ve taken 20 minutes) to one of the only Popeyes in the Seattle area on Wednesday. There was a small line but a very long wait for food (understandably! It was similar to Shake Shack at lunch — lots of peopl…

Your comment seems unbelievable to me, though maybe this has more to do with my distaste for lines in general, but I can't believe that a fast food place has developed a sandwich that would warrant a 30 minute drive let alone a 25 minute wait. I love the food in question, fried chicken sandwiches, and I was fairly disappointed with my first Chick-Fil-A sandwich, it was fairly lackluster. In my experience there are fa…

Keep in mind Popeyes is not really fast food. Unless you're ordering fried chicken, everything is cooked to order. They are bound by physics as to how fast they can cook a piece of chicken while keeping it delicious. Add assembly time, and even when it's empty, the cashier will tell you "it'll be 10 minutes" on a sandwich order.

Other things that a non-patron of Popeyes should know:

* There is a daily special (Wednesday is sandwiches in my region, it may be different in yours).

* There are coupons on the web site

* It is more expensive than fast food

* Being slightly mis-treated is part of the Popeyes experience. It's sort of how Chickfila is known for being incredibly nice to all patrons . . . well Popeyes is the opposite. If you don't leave feeling somewhat slighted, you didn't quite get the full experience.

Re: Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is an Economic Indicator

#34

Post by jscheel »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #13

Apologies for the off-topic comment — I’m not really sure if the Popeyes sandwich is an indicator of anything, but it’s a damn good sandwich. My trash food friends and I drove nearly an hour (sans traffic it would’ve taken 20 minutes) to one of the only Popeyes in the Seattle area on Wednesday. There was a small line but a very long wait for food (understandably! It was similar to Shake Shack at lunch — lots of peopl…

I mean, you aren't wrong, it's a dang good sandwich. I too waited 20 minutes in a line of 2 cars for it. I wonder though, how much of the hype is because of people who are frustrated with the Chick Fil A owner's beliefs, and not necessarily because it's a great meal? I would wager it has definitely contributed.

Re: Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is an Economic Indicator

#36

Post by JustSomeNobody »

sreyaNotfilc wrote: post #20
filmgirlcw wrote: post #13

Apologies for the off-topic comment — I’m not really sure if the Popeyes sandwich is an indicator of anything, but it’s a damn good sandwich. My trash food friends and I drove nearly an hour (sans traffic it would’ve taken 20 minutes) to one of the only Popeyes in the Seattle area on Wednesday. There was a small line but a very long wait for food (understandably! It was similar to Shake Shack at lunch — lots of peopl…

When I first took a bite out of Popeye's chicken sandwich I had two immediate thoughts. 1. This thing is delicious!! 2. Poor poor Chick-fil-A. Popeye's sandwich is much better. And I can eat it any day of the week.

On the bright side, the people who work for Chick-fil-A have at least one known, consistent day off each and every week. For most of you who have not worked a job outside of tech, that's a pretty big deal.

Re: Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is an Economic Indicator

#37

Post by [deleted] »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #13

Apologies for the off-topic comment — I’m not really sure if the Popeyes sandwich is an indicator of anything, but it’s a damn good sandwich. My trash food friends and I drove nearly an hour (sans traffic it would’ve taken 20 minutes) to one of the only Popeyes in the Seattle area on Wednesday. There was a small line but a very long wait for food (understandably! It was similar to Shake Shack at lunch — lots of peopl…

[deleted]

Re: Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is an Economic Indicator

#38

Post by shalmanese »

baddox wrote: post #9
socalnate1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a classic price discrimination strategy; nearly all retailers do it in some way. Starbucks drinks have a nearly identical marginal cost to them; but have wildly different prices. Software companies disable certain features (that already exist in the software) to sell a lower cost version of the same thing without hurting the margins with those who can pay more. Pharmaceutical companies will sell both a g…

I've always been a little unsure of the usage of "price discrimination." The basic economics glossary definition generally refers to price discrimination between identical or nearly-identical products. Yet I hear it used for things that have obvious significant functional differences, like the storage tiers of the iPhone. Surely many people are buying iPhones with upgraded storage not simply because they are willing…

The economically most efficient pricing model is to install a brain scanner onto every single potential purchaser and then price the item at a penny below their maximum price or the marginal cost, whichever is greater.

Since this is impossible and consumers would revolt, the next best thing is to get consumers to self sort into buckets based on willingness to pay. This process is necessarily going to be imperfect and the tactics can vary but what unifies it is that the goal of designing your product offering is to elicit the revealed preference of the consumer with the goal of increasing profit.

Did Apple choose to offer different storage tiers to provide benefit to the customer or increase margins? Probably a little bit of both.

Re: Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is an Economic Indicator

#39

Post by pkaye »

tenpies wrote: post #32
cco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment seems unbelievable to me, though maybe this has more to do with my distaste for lines in general, but I can't believe that a fast food place has developed a sandwich that would warrant a 30 minute drive let alone a 25 minute wait. I love the food in question, fried chicken sandwiches, and I was fairly disappointed with my first Chick-Fil-A sandwich, it was fairly lackluster. In my experience there are fa…

Keep in mind Popeyes is not really fast food. Unless you're ordering fried chicken, everything is cooked to order. They are bound by physics as to how fast they can cook a piece of chicken while keeping it delicious. Add assembly time, and even when it's empty, the cashier will tell you "it'll be 10 minutes" on a sandwich order. Other things that a non-patron of Popeyes should know: * There is a daily special (Wednes…

> Unless you're ordering fried chicken, everything is cooked to order.

So all the sides (fries, potatoes, biscuits, rice and beans, etc) are made to order?

Re: Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is an Economic Indicator

#40

Post by derefr »

baddox wrote: post #9
socalnate1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a classic price discrimination strategy; nearly all retailers do it in some way. Starbucks drinks have a nearly identical marginal cost to them; but have wildly different prices. Software companies disable certain features (that already exist in the software) to sell a lower cost version of the same thing without hurting the margins with those who can pay more. Pharmaceutical companies will sell both a g…

I've always been a little unsure of the usage of "price discrimination." The basic economics glossary definition generally refers to price discrimination between identical or nearly-identical products. Yet I hear it used for things that have obvious significant functional differences, like the storage tiers of the iPhone. Surely many people are buying iPhones with upgraded storage not simply because they are willing…

Think about it the other way around: Apple could easily afford to put the largest amount of storage they offer in all their phones. From their perspective, it wouldn't be much of a cost difference in the BOM.

But, if they only had the one phone model, how would they decide what to charge for it?

If they charge a lower price, everyone buys the phone, but they're leaving money on the table because they know that some people would have paid more.

If they charge a higher price, some people don't buy the phone, and again, they leave money on the table, because their margin is large enough that they still could have made a reasonable profit off of these people selling them the same phone.

Price discrimination—a.k.a price discovery—is a way of taking one product, and selling it for two (or more) separate prices, by having people self-select into your lower or higher price "tiers" based on some feature that costs you essentially nothing—a feature which you probably could offer everybody, even for the base price—but which you intentionally remove from lower pricing tiers, so that only the people who value "a low price" more than that feature will select into that tier.

So, for Apple, price discrimination is them ordering NAND of smaller sizes—even though this isn't really saving them money, because it's bloating their manufacturing logistics matrix—just in order to make the experience of using their entry-level phone models worse, in such a way that they can specifically target price-sensitive customers with those worse phones. Then they can crank up the price for everyone else, because now they don't have to worry about scaring the price-sensitive away: they've already made a low-tier crippled offering to serve them.

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