everything in the world is getting worse in the stupidest way possible for the worst reasons!!!
will employee wages be dynamic based on demand! of course not!
Alternatively, during mid-morning and late-afternoon lulls, the price could dip below $5.99 by as much as $1
Yeah I totally believe that 🙄
“as much as” is doing a lot of work in that sentence
They could. They won’t but they could.
They’ll do it once a month on a Friday between the hours of 2:37-2:52pm just so that they can put it in their slideshow they show to potential regulators. (They’ll leave out the duration and just show the min and max prices for each week/month/whatever.)
My demand for Wendy’s just dropped to zero. They can start sending the free food whenever they are ready. If they feel like it. I’m not demanding it.
I’m going to reserve judgement until this is verified by a better source. This is the NY Post referencing a DailyMail article. Neither of those two sources inspire confidence, and they’re both classified as tabloids.
NY Post MBFC: Medium Credibility (honestly, surprised it’s that high)
Daily Mail MBFC: Low Credibility
Daily Mail MBFC: Low Credibility
I’m surprised the Daily Heil is that high…
This is a restaurant news service that talks about it. Not sure how credible it is, but it seems more credible than the Post and the Mail.
https://www.nrn.com/quick-service/wendy-s-expects-test-dynamic-pricing-and-daypart-offers-2025
Thanks. So it seems like it does have some truth to it. Damn.
All the stuff in the article sounds expensive and unnecessary. Like, just bring back Yellow Wendy’s.
The AI menu thing is just baffling.
It’s less baffling when you realize 90% of AI is thrown in needlessly by pointy-haired bosses just because it’s trendy.
New way to kill 5 minutes of their 20 minute quarterly presentations.
Haha I was just about to say wtf are “AI-enabled menu changes”?
It was on the earnings call
Wendy’s has gone downhill the past decade and a half anyway. Screw 'em.
My wife enjoys their baked potato and their chili but she told me that if they do this, forget it.
I just learned this past Friday that you can buy Wendy’s chili in a can at Kroger (and probably other grocery chains, too). Haven’t tried it yet, but I can’t imagine it’d be any different than what’s mass produced for the restaurants.
I’d eat it. For me, there’s no real difference between that and a can of Hormel chili, which I ate all the time as a kid, but I bet she’d be against it for reasons.
I want to say the Hormel is thicker/heartier, but I honestly can’t remember. I used to get Wendy’s chili all the time before COVID and after that, I pretty much cut out all fast food (the one time I did stop to eat, it just seemed disgusting and expensive). Probably going to crack open that can and have it and a baked potato for lunch tomorrow.
We have a 13-year-old, so cutting out fast food is not an option at the moment.
Hormel is indeed much thicker than Wendy’s chili.
I tried it recently and it didn’t taste ANYTHING like the chili at Wendy’s.
I love chilli baked potatoes and when I’m at Wendy’s I tend to get one. That said it takes me less time to nuke a spud than to find my shoes. Brown some burger in a pot, can of chilli, microwave that tater, you’ve got a Wendy’s experience in 15 minutes and only dirty a pot, a bowl, and a spoon
Does this mean Wendy’s restaurants should have a lighted sign at the road that changes like gasoline prices showing the current price of a burger?
Nah. You’ll just be expected to flip through all the different fast food apps and check prices on your phone while you drive around the travel plaza. Good luck, pedestrians.
I don’t get the point of ordering by app if you have to go through the drive-through line anyway. I mean I know why they want you to do it, but I don’t understand why anyone would.
I pretty much only use the apps if I can.
There’s basically always some deal I can save a few bucks on. Easy to see any new menu items ahead of time. Coordinate the whole family order with all the customizations. Easier communication at the order box. There’s also usually some built-in rewards program.
Doesn’t the data mining bother you though?
My data has some value, but I can’t sell it, might as well get something for it. Using apps, I get like $200+/yr.
So that shows you that obviously your data is worth much more than $200/yr.
Oh god my nightmare is having an app for everything
I’ve found it helps with accuracy. Especially when ordering for a family of 5. Plus it’s nice to pass my phone around and have people input their orders, rather than trying to blurt it all out at a drive thru speaker.
Eh, I don’t like interacting with people, so I’ll take any chance to minimize it, if not eliminate it entirely. So I use the app to specify how I want my burger (and my kids’). I’d rather do curbside, but if that isn’t an option, just giving a name or code at the intercom is better than having to repeat things 3 times and/or wonder if they heard me when they don’t say anything…
I don’t “app” at all and have turned around and left multiple restaurants when asked to scan a QR code for a menu.
I’m 100% with the boomers on this.
If the QR code takes me to a PDF or the restaurant’s webpage, that’s one thing. But if it takes me to the app store, I give up.
That’s still a step further than I’ll go. If my phone is required to be involved with the ordering process at all, it’s a dealbreaker (unless I’m ordering takeout over the phone that is, lol)
Ugh. The kid was desperate to go to this restaurant called The Sugar Factory, which has insane milkshakes. The menu was a QR code and it linked to a pdf of the paper menu they no longer had that you just had to zoom in and scroll around on. It was like 4 pages long too.
Also, it was totally not worth going to. Overpriced and not good.
I don’t know what I was expecting with a name like The Sugar Factory but my blood pressure spiked looking at this picture.
I did not get one of those. I stuck with booze.
I’d drink alcohol too if I was here…
That’s good info. A friend in NJ won’t shut up about them, so I’d for sure end up going there the next time I visit.
I’m lactose intolerant, but will (and have) absolutely power through the pain for a good milkshake. Gotta pick my battles with dairy.
Vegan milkshakes are good now
I think I might be lactose intolerant. Like I can eat a bowl a cereal with milk no problem, and even ice cream is okay. However, cheese and (for god knows what reason) milkshakes will make my stomach go wonky.
But like you, I’ll happily drink a milkshake and suffer the consequences later. Fuck cheese tho, it tastes nasty to me.
I also have a stone fruit allergy, but every once in a while a peach is so good that I’ll eat one feel less than ideal afterward. Worth it.
Burger King’s Whopper Wednesday deal is only available if you order through the app. The regular price is like three times as much.
But I will say, I’m finally coming around to the fact that it’s not worth it at any price.
You’re paying for it in another way- by letting them harvest your data.
I mean I wouldn’t go to Burger King either way, but that’s why they have that deal.
There’s a sketchy af gas station near me where they have a $0.899 advertised “gas price” sign. Only instead of “regular” or premium gasoline that it’s advertising on the sign, it instead says “fountain” for fountain drinks, despite those signs universally displaying gasoline prices instead.
I boycott places like that. Even if it’s two prices for cash/credit, no and fuck you. You just lost a customer forever. Considering my fuel tank is 55 gallons that’s actually significant.
I’d bet they also have blaring adverts at the pumps.
There’s one near me that only advertises the price with car wash. So the sign shows what you pay per gallon if you also decide to spend an extra $15 on a shitty automatic car wash. WTF??
This you?
Auxiliary fuel tank? That’s 25% larger than the biggest passenger vehicle I’ve driven.
I full time in a 30ft RV.
Also, if I’m stopping for gas I’m usually coming in to buy some other stuff too. Or I could go down the street and spend my money there.
That sign there clearly indicates fountain drinks are $0.899 per GALLON
Bring a hose and tank for your syrup water.
I think i passed that sign on my way to Florida last year, it caught my eye as well
That’s a reasonable response for transparent pricing
Good thing I don’t eat fast food.
This presumes that there is demand for Wendy’s.
Yeah, I can’t wait to get free Wendy’s all the time.
Easy way to lose customers.
It’s never going to get cheaper than it is currently.
If I don’t know what it costs, how can I budget for it? If I can’t budget for it I’m not going to drive over to check out the prices, fuel “fluctuations” have seen to that.
If anything shouldn’t they be charging more during the slower hours?
Basic supply and demand economics. When supply is high and demand is low, prices fall. When demand is high and supply is low, prices rise. They think people will willingly sit in line regardless of the price because, in reality, people have.
Conversely, they wouldn’t want to drive people away when business is slow and can easily jump into another drive thru.
Food is a very price sensetive industry. If you rip someone off after making them wait they’ll go elsewhere and never come back
This is how I act, I don’t complain, I leave a poison review and then never go back. Sometimes I tell people about it for years.
Exactly, I hold grudges against food places for years. Conversely, I’ll frequent good places for just as long.
It never has to go long for non-chain places. They always go out of business so we can’t be the only ones. I bet this is really common.
It’s already like $12 to eat the basic meals there. What are they trying to bump it up to during these “surges?”
Squeeeeze those customers! More! The executives need more moneyyy!!!
So basically scalpers on fast food chains, right?
Huh, that’s interesting. Well, guess I’m never eating there ever again. It’s bad enough with gasoline, no way I’m paying inflated pricing for fast food.
In other news grocery bags of frozen burger patties can be had for cheaper than an actual combo meal…
Is this why my Texas Double went from 1.79 to 3.19 in the course of a week? I just stopped going there completely.
Fast food is just too expensive for what you get now. You used to be able to get some cheap food there. Now it’s expensive, but still cheaply made.
McDonald’s app has been doing this fun thing over the last year or so where they’ll suck you in with good deals that repeat a few times, then change them for the worse.
Remember when McDonald’s had a 99 cent menu and you could get a Taco Bell taco for 59 cents?
Spent over fifty dollars at shake shack last week treating two friends. Just another place crossed off the list.
Yeah, at this point you may as well go upmarket. That’s why they’re going all in on being “car food” because that’s the last niche that would make someone go
This reminded me of a now closed taphouse near where I used to work that would increase the cost for each of the beers/ciders their served based on a formula of how much they had in stock and the rate of sale. They hired a full stack dev to design a stock style tracking app and they wanted to somehow gamify beer cost for their primary audience (local tech bros).
That lasted about a month before they abandoned it completely (and I hired the guy that made their app for a CRM my company was building). They went to normal prices that don’t change minute-to-minute and the place lasted another 10 years.
Where I’m from a trap house is another name for a crack house. So I was a little confused at first.
Intersting. I’m not sure I’ve heard crack houses called that… I’m also not really up to date on that sort of thing.
Tap houses are common in Oregon. They have a couple dozen or more craft and/or imported beer/cider (and sometimes mead) on tap. They usually serve food and sell by the glass but they also sell growlers to go. Ostensibly they’re there to fill growlers, but most in my area are basically bars for foodies.
The name tap house for a place with stuff on tap makes perfect sense. It’s not common where I’ve lived before, hence me always reading it as trap house. Those are very common.
That was First National Taphouse or something like that, right?
Must be one of those scams where the C-Suite gets a major payday for destroying a company.
