Now enshittification is coming for our cheap burgers…
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You are correct apart from the profit part. Aside from occasional accounting flimflammery, Uber has been a massive money loser since its creation. It is now squeezing drivers and customers in a desperate attempt to achieve profitability (now that the cab companies are on the ropes due to Uber’s exploitation of drivers and nonexistent safety/labor practices).
We have a Wendy’s in our town, as well as a Tim Horton’s. I think about 50% of their revenue is high school kids at lunch time - which would definitely qualify as a surge. However, if they jack up the prices for that ‘surge’ the kids will just stop going there. If the owner of that local franchise wasn’t such a thoroughgoing dickwad I’d almost feel sorry for him.
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Wendy’s is usually the top winner when it comes to fast food burgers. This feels like someone being overly cocky because they were sitting on top of the pile.
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My brother said he always wanted to open a soup restaurant with 3 daily soup options: Beef, Chicken, Seafood. The price for each would vary according to supply/demand and he would call it the stock market. sigh
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That feels like one thing that the culture of “tipping” as a form of payment actually gets right.
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I’m all in favor. No one needs Wendy’s food, it’s way less critical than transportation (Uber/Lyft), they’re almost never the only or primary fast-food option in an area, and so the actual price doesn’t really matter much for anyone’s well-being. I expect they want people to order ahead of time as much as possible, and this encourages that while also offsetting most of the risk of price shock when getting to the restaurant for anyone who cares. And if/when it fails because customers hate it, they’ll either stop, or not, and either way the harm done is minimal.
Honestly I think this is much better than McDonald’s method of “We charge a time-and-math tax by having totally different prices in the app, at a kiosk, at the counter, on the posted menu, and depending on whether you order in the right secret code.”
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Remember the story about the AT&T execs who suggested that the “Game of Thrones” finale movies should be shot vertically for phones? I guess we know where they ended up after getting fired for their stupid ideas.
I’m not sure if that meets the “seemingly intelligent” threshold.
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I think this policy is very considerate of Wendy’s employees - after all, the effect is going to be that fewer people will attempt to buy food during rush periods, thus reducing the strain on workers. That probably wasn’t what corporate intended, but fast food restaurants tend to be rather fungible and by their nature customers have little invested in their visits, so it’s easy enough to just go to different one. I suspect they’re going to lose a lot of business with this nonsense.
I know that ultimately it’s coming for everything, but this isn’t where I expected to see it next…
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As a former fast food worker in a tourist town I can see management floating this idea to make the most of tour buses. The tourists usually had a fixed time and few options, so I can see them thinking they can get away with surge prices because tourist expect higher prices when traveling. They probably think the locals/regulars will put up with it because they can choose to come when the tour buses are not there.
Urg, this is so going to trigger nightmares working the cash. Thanks Wendy’s.
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It’s a terrible idea, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. Lots of horrible, exploitative business practices have caught on because customers act like they have no choice and keep right on buying as though nothing has changed. It’s partly up to Wendy’s customers to make sure this fails by having some basic standards and taking their business elsewhere.
Ideally, even trying this shit would result in a permanent boycott that sinks the company even if they tried to roll it back, thus sending a very strong message to others not to even think of trying it. But which is more likely: the boycott, or customers hanging their heads, meekly forking over the extra cash, and surge pricing becoming the norm across the fast food industry?
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Making the traditional drive-thru experience worse to push people towards their app may be one of their goals. Dynamic pricing based on time or demand is a fairly crude tool compared to the kind of data-driven personalized pricing they can subject app users to, on top of other awful stuff like dark pattern reward programs and location/movement based advertising.
It won’t stop there, either. Taco Bell has already dabbled in the subscription space with TacoPass, I suspect we’ll see legit attempts at a premium paid subscription service from some FF brand or another before 2030.
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Plus if you have to top off the app, they’ve got money on hand they can get interest for.
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Literal enshitification.
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I’ve seen some Ice Cream shops many years ago that had a posted formula for the price of Ice Cream on any given day that was proportional to the max temperature forecast for that day in the previous day’s newspaper. I wasn’t especially upset about it, partially because they showed you exactly how it was calculated, and partially because it wasn’t an unreasonable price even on hot days.
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In addition to the usual reasons to eschew fast food, THIS adds heavily to those reasons against.
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I’m beginning to think we may need a bingo card (which “the market will regulate itself” will be on, in the top left corner) for late-stage neo-liberal economics based capitalism stories like these.
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Top left? That sounds more like center to me
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TBF, Taco Bell food is only rented for a very short time…
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Your broth-er, you say?
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