alt-text: Woman ordering food (photo): “I would like to buy a hamburger for the same price that it was 2 hours ago.”
Cashier (sketched): “Sir, this is a Wendy’s”
I actually like Wendy’s, but if they implement this at my local store I’m boycotting. The cost for you to make the food per item doesn’t fucking change if there’s 1 person in line or 100, just the wait time. It’s pure profiteering.
The effort the employee has to put forth to meet demand changes during a rush, not that they will see a penny of the higher revenue they are directly responsible for generating.
It changes in that there are economies of scale involved. It actually becomes cheaper and more efficient for the company to make 20 cheeseburgers at once than just one. That’s why this surge pricing thing is a joke. Would the company really like to introduce friction to customers buying more food?
Only way I can make any sense of it is to try balance the day. Get more business on quiet time, and less on rush hour. But I don’t get how it would make any sense from the business perspective since usually you’d want to optimize for the rush hour, not push customers away with higher pricing
Because people just show up at rush hour for shits and giggles, and not because that’s their non-negotiable lunch break or their trip home. This is a stupid move.
I’ll just demand everything be made to order and be fresh. I encourage everyone to do the same and tank their numbers. If they’re going to charge extra during peak hours then you bet your ass I’m demanding fries fresh out of the frier and burgers right off the grill. I can wait 3 minutes for the fries.
That’s how you end up with spit in your burger.
And a lawsuit. What’s your point?
That’s how you end up with spit in your burger.
^ This.
Forget to switch accounts there bud? I know where the two downvotes came from. Another troll to block.
But are they paying the employee more?
Hahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha haha!
I like Wendy’s also and this really fucking torques my tacos. Well, fuck them. I’m not going to be ripped off because I choose to eat at a popular time of day.
Their employees thank you. They don’t wanna make your rush hour burgers.
What happens? They change the prices throughout the day?
They announced they will be switching to surge pricing. If there are a lot of people trying to get burgers, they’ll increase the price of burgers.
But will the employees see surge pay for handling so many customers at once?
LOL!
No, but the floggings will increase.
Fucking LOL. When are we going to start rioting against all this bullshit?
Rioting won’t work, you talk with your money. The only thing capitalism cares about is your labor and consumption…that’s it.
My money said “string them up from the streetlamps” so I guess we doing that.
Narrator: they didn’t
Let’s put “surge pricing” in quotes to make it clear that it’s some bullshit they just made up.
Back in my day we called it price gauging. Not sure what this surge price bullshit is. They are trying to steal my nostalgic feeling for surge to make it ok?
Ah, Surge…
Wasn’t surge basically the diesel version of mountain dew? I vaguely remember trying it once and not caring for it.
I mean, I don’t think the entire concept is flawed. I want to wait and see what it actually means - especially if it’s cheaper to grab food outside of surge hours.
I understand it likely won’t be, but I won’t damn them until we have more information.
especially if it’s cheaper to grab food outside of surge hours.
you really don’t understand how corporations work, do you.
It’s not impossible.
It’s not probable, but why not wait to damn them?
I say why wait
Even if it started out that way, where “surge” pricing is current pricing and “off-surge” pricing is cheaper, leading to consumers paying less overall, it won’t stay that way. It would only be that way to prime consumers mentally to accept that dynamic pricing. After which they’ll slowly increase prices, 10 cents or whatever every month. Soon enough it’ll cost more and the corporation can brag about how it increased profits again this quarter. Remember publicly traded companies are legally obligated to maximize profit - the only time they aren’t doing so is when they’re burning money to prime consumers to accept bullshit or building a captive base, in order to eventually maximize profits.
Because in the last 5,000 price hikes there has never been a decrease in pricing. There’s a bit of a trend. Corps are always guilty until proven innocent. Hint: they’re never innocent.
because there’s no need to wait, corporations are predictable… it does not matter how much they say they care about quality or the consumer. they will fuck over every single person on the planet at a moment’s notice if it means 0.15% additional profit.
If you still frequent an establishment that does this, you’re the problem
Do you know what sucks about there being SOOOOOO many people? It’s that there’s always a certain percentage that are morons and they still go for shit like this, ruining it for everyone else.
It’s an interesting spin on the tragedy of the commons. There’s no public or shared resources here, but the few are still ruining it for the many.
The tragedy of the commons is all capitalist nonsense from the 60s anyway. People are quite good at balancing resources within their communities, and sharing spaces and resources makes everyone’s experiences better. It’s only with the “profit at others expense” capitalist mindset that the cooperative model falls apart.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth
The few will always ruin it for the many where capitalism is involved. It’s inevitable.
But it’s not the few you think it is. It’s not normal people just trying to get by, it’s the people who set it up this way in the first place. They know not everyone will stop. It’s squarely on them.
That appears to be an opinion piece based on anecdotal evidence, which, while the original claim is not based on science either, does not provide adequate evidence to dismiss it as “capitalist nonsense”.
It is merely another claim in the opposite direction. They are equally valid takes, but one does not refute the other.
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That only happens in one country, where people are stupid enough to put up with it. Which was my point
Bingo!
I’m looking at you Apple fanboys!
Apple doesn’t do surge pricing on anything, the fuck are you on about?
If you frequent than establishment with all the bullshit it pulls, you’re the problem.
The fuck kinda cherry picking stupid you gotta be to miss that?
it feels like you didn’t even respond to my comment
I feel like this is one of those memes that in the future historians and sociologists will use to gleam context and the human element to major life periods after the collapse of society as qe know it.
Shit I mean lul
Watch me predict the future: There will be sites/apps that monitor prices so you can order at the least expensive times.
The restaurant chains will sue those sites/apps.
Kinda reminds me of the GasBuddy app that informs customers of varying gas prices in their area, and of course GasBuddy realized how much power they were weilding with this app, and has sold its soul to the devil and now incorporates customer psychological manipulation & data mining into the app.
Yeah… I was an early adopter of GasBuddy and kept my locals up to date. Made more people use it and it was great for a bit. Then enshittificaiton happened… Big corps pull a bait and switch. Small companies sell out…
Yup. Have to change a setting to see stations that don’t have a GasBuddy deal. Such as Costco, which Always has much cheaper prices where I live than anything else.
The only way I’ve been able to find Costco gas prices is to go to the Costco website then search each location separately, quite a time-consuming headache, but I spent a couple hours doing that one day a couple summers ago to figure out which Costcos in California have diesel.
That’s gonna be the dumbest lawsuit, which means it’s very likely to come to pass
So what happens if the price changes while you’re waiting in line? Will they post the prices to the last car in line or do you have to wait till you get up to order. What about drive throughs that don’t have enough space for someone to get out of line? Are they gonna try to guilt people into paying whatever price they’re given?
Yes they will guilt you. The McDonald’s in my town has it so you can’t get out of line once you reach the signs with the prices. If you don’t have it memorized and realize you can’t afford it… well sucks to be you
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maybe some day someone will implement hamburger futures
Since beef futures are already a thing, you could invest in that and then use the profit for hamburgers, money being fungible and all that.
Just wait until Wendycoin drops
As long they don’t keep the “lowest price” the regular base price, this does have the potential to disrupt fast food purchasing habits. Imagine people always trying to game Wendys to see if they can get the burger cheaper, you’d theoretically see a sine wave develop over a month or so. Then that sine wave would translate laterally as time further progressed and people adapted to the shifting surge pricing. It also has just as much likelihood to ruin Wendy’s sales, but time will tell.
The fluxuations will be dampened by the fact people get hungry around 12 and 5. When people are able to buy food (lunch breaks and end of work day) will also limit such fluctuations. Maybe a sine wave will form but there probably isn’t enough people with the ability or forsight to try and game the system.
Time constraints or not I think most people will just go next door to Burger King.
Also, if they start to sell cheaper that what use to be the regular price in off-peak hours, it could attract some people.
As long as they are transparent about which hour you’ll find which price, that’s not so much a problem for the customer. But transparency is important, I don’t want to see the illegitimate son of Wendy’s and SNCF pricing algorithm. Never.
If your mom did surge pricing she could buy the whole Wendy’s franchise.
But she wouldn’t because professionals have standards
Would that work, though? There are guys who want to be the only one at the time, and there are guys who want to be one of many at a time.
Splooge pricing
Especially in Alabama.
Steps to creating your own “Bullish Burger” Stock Market
- Bulk order just before peak,
- Resell those orders as demand rises.
- Profit
that might not be entierly legal,
you cant legally sell onions on the futures market since 1958Huh, son of a bitch. Can’t wait to use this one
The Onion Futures Act is a United States law banning the trading of futures contracts on onions as well as “motion picture box office receipts”
Lol. Wut?
in 1956 some guy sneakily trough shell companys and such stuff, used the futures market to controll 98% of the onion suply and screwed over a lot of people.
the onion futures act was the goverments absolute brilliant idea for a fix.
i have no idea what the box office receipts thing is about
Yeah no, I get the Onion thing, it’s usually taught in collegiate finance courses… but the Box Office thing threw me off. Apparently the MPAA lobbied to have it added. I am just amused that it’s attached to Onion Law.
From a couple minutes on Wikipedia, it was added to the law as part of Dodd-Frank in 2010, which overhauled the US financial system after the recession. The MPAA lobbied heavily on it
I’ve already long since acquired a severe case of app fatigue to the point that I refuse to order from a place if I’m required to download an app to get whatever price.
Now I’m going to have in person timing fatigue.
You could argue that happy hour is surge pricing already in place, and I suppose that’s true, but the perception is that it’s a lower price than regular.
Wendy’s is presenting this as a higher price than regular.
You’re right, it seems like they’d be smarter to offer a discount during off-peak hours. It should accomplish the same thing.
Im OOTL whats going on?
Wendy’s will be using surge pricing to increase their prices when it’s busy.
Thank you :D
Like, is this a self-imposed excise tax? Too many people in line! Let’s knock the poors out since our food is unhealthy. (I know that I am conflating an excise tax with capitalist class aggression, but I’m tired, so whatever.)
Not a tax, basically just a price-signal. But maybe also a markeing push since it gets attention by being novel. Its functionally similar to happy hour specials or loss-leaders.
Wait, is that a real thing? Do we also have this here in Germany?
its something the fastfood chain wendy’s is trying out.
they dont operate in germany anymore,
so no.
There’s an altruistic future I could envision where this software goes towards selling burgers for cheap to lower-income people coming in at odd times, in order to avoid food waste where the burgers get thrown out. Similarly, nice restaurant owners do this the simple way: Low prices for good food, always. But, I definitely don’t trust chains like Wendy’s with this.
