So now I’m stuck in the drive-through line when I see the price for what I want is unacceptably high. I can’t get out of that narrow lane until everybody in front of me completes their transactions and my lunch time is run out before I can get something else to eat. NOT HAPPY!
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I had to let that one simmer a bit…
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But where it needs to be done is by customers doing the personalisation of pricing.
Give them to means to bid - saying “I’ll buy a burger at THIS price - take it or leave it in 10 seconds”. Either Wendy’s takes the price or declines it. Customer can raise the bid, bid later when it may be accepted, or bid with another burger outfit. Let’s enshittify the capitalists, not the consumers.
(Yeah, I know, the devil is in the detail, and this would fall apart in so many ways, in all probability.)
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That’s too bad. I liked Wendy’s burgers.
Sorry I picked the bare bones out of the situation before before things came off the boil.
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At least the carcass of this thread nourished someone.
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Only if they’ve been concentrating. (I’m sorry I’ve been reduced to this!)
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If dynamic pricing becomes common for fast food, it’ll quite likely create demand for a realtime price aggregator app (a la GasBuddy), which is kind of like what you’re suggesting. On balance it would still be a worse situation for consumers than what we have now, though.
If the chains can get their customers to swallow dynamic pricing and use their apps, however, all bets are off. I’m sure there’s a tech bro or two out there having wet dreams about being able to sell the same hamburger for different prices depending on what their algorithm thinks a given customer will pay.
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So saucy!
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Just add some floury language and you won’t roux the day.
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Does it go below the norm at quiet time then?
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Always interesting to see management not understanding their own company’s business model.
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One of the core fallacies of American business culture is that an MBA can be parachuted into any company and run it competently despite having zero industry experience. That’s the actual business model of management consultancies like McKinsey.
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Agreed. Though there’s an argument to say that it started as a core, foundational fallacy of McKinsey’s business model but, being McKinsey, the alumni mafia make sure it is promulgated everywhere they land.
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“Sir, this is an Uber.”
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Backtracking
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So the CEO is a coward in addition to being incompetent. Typical.
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They are still doing digital menus to support variable pricing though. They just realized that phrasing it as a discount is better than a price hike.
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.”
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If someone outside of the company starts tracking prices, it wouldn’t be surprising to find an immediate price hike on all products when this goes live and the “discount surge” prices reflecting close-to-but-not-quite the prices they offered before.
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