Opportunity for entrepreneurs to buy low and sell high.
Especially since fast food demand appears to be much easier to predict.
Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
61–70 of 83 posts
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#62The impression I get is that this is another case of someone impressed with a tech industry practice misapplying it outside of any sensible context. I see it a lot with people using kanban boards and "sprints" when doing something very predictable, repeatable, estimable, and plannable, and a Gantt chart could easily be created for the whole project. Because the cool kids in software are doing it. "We have an app now, how about surge pricing?"
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#63[deleted]
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 scald…
> 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.
so...you are assuming their sales are flat or declining based on your sense of the vibe and are assuming they lied in their SEC filings?
this is a fairly bold method to analyse the world with.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#65During 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 t…
Your two redirect scenarios isn't surge pricing though, and I think run counter to the very nature of surge pricing. In the first scenario the restaurant is reducing stress on the kitchen and the client by offering an alternative with a good reason. If the restaurant instead said "you can pay an extra $2 or wait 15 minutes", then it's comparable but I haven't run into that yet. In the Happy Hour scenario the restaura…
Happy Hour is static surge pricing.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#66[dupe] wasting our time OP
More discussion a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39514464
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No, I got your point, I'm saying that partial mitigations for that are already in place. Every business on the planet also assumes there will be slow times and busy times, and the busy times will make up for the slow. Surge pricing only really works when the demand and supply can be elastic, and a Wendy's restaurant is a bad example.
Averaging prices over expected volumes is inefficient though: you're essentially screwing some people over to recoup it from others.
Why not true price if you have the ability?
Previously, it wasn't possible because of printed menu costs. Now it is.
And I feel like food prices can absolutely be elastic, with a notification method like app pushes.
If the local Wendy's says they're selling burgers at $2 because they're slow today, more people might decide to go.
And critically (and what this is probably really about) they can reprice in real-time in relation to their neighboring alternatives.
I.e. McDonald's across the street discounts their cheeseburger, Wendy's can mimic
That's what this stuff is really used for when retail adopted it.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your two redirect scenarios isn't surge pricing though, and I think run counter to the very nature of surge pricing. In the first scenario the restaurant is reducing stress on the kitchen and the client by offering an alternative with a good reason. If the restaurant instead said "you can pay an extra $2 or wait 15 minutes", then it's comparable but I haven't run into that yet. In the Happy Hour scenario the restaura…
Happy Hour is static surge pricing.
> Happy Hour is static surge pricing.
Happy Hour is incentive pricing to try to get customers to come in earlier than normal.
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your two redirect scenarios isn't surge pricing though, and I think run counter to the very nature of surge pricing. In the first scenario the restaurant is reducing stress on the kitchen and the client by offering an alternative with a good reason. If the restaurant instead said "you can pay an extra $2 or wait 15 minutes", then it's comparable but I haven't run into that yet. In the Happy Hour scenario the restaura…
Happy Hour is static surge pricing.
No.
Surge pricing = increase price in response to demand with a goal of increasing profit margin
Happy Hour = decrease price of specified items at specified times to drive demand and increase sales volume
Re: Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Happy Hour is static surge pricing.
No. Surge pricing = increase price in response to demand with a goal of increasing profit margin Happy Hour = decrease price of specified items at specified times to drive demand and increase sales volume
Those aren't fundamentally different. I've seen places raise their standard prices and then make the old prices available during Happy Hour.