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this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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I’m going to wager that the plan was never to raise prices at busy times, it was always to use dynamic pricing to put things on sale and bundle stuff. Hear me out…
This is how dynamic pricing is often used in retail. The sales and bundles dupe you into buying more shit, and that raises your order total.
Wendy’s is not Uber or Lyft. There are MANY options that people have for lunch. If they just raise prices at peak times, people will eat elsewhere.
Nah, I think they were really going to try and introduce surge pricing until they saw how intense the backlash was, then decided to try and walk it back.
Maybe you are right, but I have a tough time giving these giant companies the benefit of doubt when it's already been shown there was price gouging across the board in the middle of a pandemic.
Oh, I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt. I 100% think this was a greedy way for them to milk as much money as possible out of their customers.
My guess is that a promo strategy would be the easiest way for them to bleed a wallet. I say that because I’ve worked for some big shitty ecommerce companies that have tested this stuff, and their PR materials all seemed to talk about “saving” money.
What evidence are you basing your conclusion on?
The very long, very well established history of corporations fucking people over for more profit every time they thought they might be able to get away with it. Did you forget or are you just asking in bad faith?
So why get pissed at Wendy's in particular?
I can be pissed at more than one thing, it's one of my many talents!
Yeah corporations suck but I think you're right. This plan was just poorly worded. Congestion pricing does not make sense for a market with so much competition.
You're absolutely right there but I can definitely see some out-of-touch millionaire executive in an office somewhere having the brilliant idea, "We're gonna be the Uber of restaurants!"
True, but all they said was “dynamic pricing.”
Everyone assumed this was the surge pricing model, but milking a wallet via a promo engine model is what is more common in retail.
Their PR talked about saving money and luring customers in. I’ll wager that an algorithmic promotion engine was the real play. It would pull customers away from the competition during peak hours, and it would make people buy more by thinking they’re getting a deal.
Being suspicious of corporations is great, but it does seem like a lot of people to take any announcement by a big company, interpret it in the least charitable way possible (even if it doesn't make sense), and then get mad based on the interpretation they came up with.
If people were really against variable prices as a concept, they'd already be boycott every business with a happy hour, but they're not. They're just assuming Wendy's plans to dramatically raise prices and was dumb enough to draw attention to it. And really, even without an announcement, raising prices beyond the rate of inflation doesn't make sense, because if they're remotely competent, they're already charging as much as people are willing to pay. Wendy's has every reason to believe that just arbitrarily raising prices faster then the industry as a whole will hurt their bottom line.
I feel like Lemmy started out as a place to have nuanced conversations, which was a refreshing change from Reddit. But I feel like the confirmation bias in many communities is pretty aggressive now. Nuanced and pragmatic comments are not what bubble up to the top.
food is a very price sensitive industry