Will they increase the pay of the employees who work during the surge periods proportionally to the size of the price increase?
Depends, can they staff the shift without doing that?
If yes, no.
Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
41–50 of 83 posts
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#42During surge periods restaurants redirect customers all the time.
"We're sorry, there's a 15 minute delay for hamburgers; are you OK waiting or would you prefer to order something else".
Also:
"Happy hour pricing".
As long as they have a somewhat reasonable fixed maximum price I suspect consumers will accept this quite well. Then it wouldn't be much different than dynamic happy hour pricing or any of the many other types of sale pricing that other stores run.
And it's not much different from what McDonald's is doing. The pricing for walk in customers at McDonald's has gotten horrendous. Yet if you use their app you can pretty much always find a coupon to get a more reasonable price. McDonald's would get a good reception if those more reasonable prices were also available in store during off-peak hours.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#43This is not going to be well-received by their customers and is likely to send business to McDonald's and Burger King instead. They also really shouldn't be doing "suggestive selling" whether with humans or machines. Just shut up and take the customer's order rather than trying to talk them into ordering something. Nobody likes when stores or restaurants do that even if it "increases metrics" because some people choo…
> likely to send business to McDonalds Wendy’s is doing this in order to compete with McDonalds, which has been pushing up prices much faster than inflation for several years in a row… and McDonalds has publicly claimed it’s not hurting their business. https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-price-hikes-puttin...
McDonalds has every incentive to insist to its shareholders that price increases do not impact business performance. any onlooker --even Wendy herself-- who thinks otherwise is deluded.
McDonalds is routinely lambasted on social media and in memes for its recently gilded pricing. the quality just is not there. I suspect actual sales are flat, or in decline as a response to the price increase.
The alternative to scalding a frog is a world where corporations occasionally have to suffer the consequences of inflation as well as consumers.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#44I was watching a bit of youtube this morning, and there was a wendy's ad. It ended with "All this for $5!" as the final pitch for whatever meal it was. If they do dynamic pricing, they'll cut themselves off from that kind of ad entirely right?
You (generally?) can't advertise one price, and charge a different one when the customer actually shows up.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#45Hot take -- good! Labor is a huge component of food costs. Labor cost per menu item is directly dependent on sales per time unit, as the labor has to be staffed regardless of sales. Ergo, food at low-volume times (late night) should cost more. PS: It's not as if airlines, online retail, etc. aren't already doing this. I find it hard to get outraged that one industry is different than others.
I don't think there's a single restaurant on the planet with a line that runs with the same labour cost at 11 PM as they do at 6 PM.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#46I think this is an act of desperation and will completely fail. Customers will see the higher prices during certain times and just not go there. These kinds of games are insulting to consumers and represent very narrow, bean counter mentality.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#47Wait until they realize that they can tie this AI into facial recognition at those big screen kiosks and they change the prices based on the appearance of the person ordering.
That's very illegal. You can only discriminate based on the appearance if you are doing enterprise sales.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#48It’s not a new idea but i’ve always “wanted” to do something similar with beer at a long bar with many many kegs of craft beer. Idea is to make sure all the product ends up moving and nothing stays untouched. Massive train station style flipping letter/number signage behind the bar with updating prices every 15-30min or something if it’s busy. One of the laundry list of reasons this is just a pipe dream is alcohol pricing like this is definitely illegal where I live.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#49Are they going to pay their employees more during surge? I worked food industry as a teenager with a stint in fast food- it can be crazy, you get physically and mentally tired, from both moving quickly but from the increased number of angry customers. Hazard pay!
I've done two stints of working in supermarkets. Once during college 2007-2011 then later 2021-2023.
Customers are far worse now. Glad i'm out of it again because it's a lot harder to put up with the treatment once you've worked in anything else.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#50Hot take -- good! Labor is a huge component of food costs. Labor cost per menu item is directly dependent on sales per time unit, as the labor has to be staffed regardless of sales. Ergo, food at low-volume times (late night) should cost more. PS: It's not as if airlines, online retail, etc. aren't already doing this. I find it hard to get outraged that one industry is different than others.
I don't think there's a single restaurant on the planet with a line that runs with the same labour cost at 11 PM as they do at 6 PM.
You're missing the point. It's normalized against sales volume.
So it doesn't matter if the late night restaurant is quarter-staffed, if they only do a tenth of the sales volume.