Scorched earth: starting in 2025, Wendy’s to explore surge pricing, where food costs dynamically change based on varying conditions; time, weather, demand
The knee-jerk reactions of the collective internet are probably exactly what anyone with a sensible brain would expect; full of bile, resentment, disdain, and a whole lot of declarations of never going to Wendy’s again, among other hard statements most feel comfortable spouting off on the internet without. And absolutely nothing positive or with any hint of praise because nobody is in the 1% of greedy fucks who make these kinds of choices.
And who can really blame anyone for being disappointed and furious over this kind of announcement? Fast food exists because it’s supposed to be cheap, predictable, reliable to exist, and not something where anyone rolling up to a Wendy’s has to think about not knowing what prices they’re going to see on the menu.
It goes without saying that this is a 100% cash grab, because everyone knows consumers aren’t going to be seeing “the low end” of the pricing model beyond perhaps those weird 30-minute windows in between breakfast and lunch time and lunch time and dinner, and that’s only if the weather conditions aren’t remotely hazardous. Store personnel probably won’t be seeing any sort of monetary benefit to financial fluctuation, and in fact when some locations actually start losing business due to this reckless idea, their jobs will be where the difference in earnings will be made up from.
Unsurprisingly, most everyone knows it, and those who do, all hate it. It’s flagrant greed and complete disregard for consumers, whose stress levels are already ratcheted up to the moon due to the completely imbalanced escalations of inflation versus wages.
Now I like Wendy’s food, there’s a reason why they’re one of the few burger joints that still manages to thrive, at least in the Atlanta area. Burger Kings a few and far between locations, McDonalds is widely regarded as somehow unhealthier than Wendy’s, and there just aren’t enough Dairy Queens to compete against Wendy’s it seems. Five Guys are already branded being egregiously priced, but at least they don’t (yet) flex their prices based on time and weather conditions.
But the thing is, I go to Wendy’s as frequently as I go to McDonald’s, which is to say practically never. At least where I am, all the Wendy’s are completely staffed with the dregs of the dregs of society, and they’re completely unreliable, drive-thru lines wrapped around the building, that is if they didn’t decide to close up shop at 8:30 pm when they’re supposed to be Open Late.™ And the last few times I’ve actually eaten their food, as tasty as it is, my body definitely regretted it when I’m waking up at 2-3 am because my digestive system is revolting.
So I’m not concerned with my conviction at being able to further avoid Wendy’s if and when this bullshit surging comes to my area, because I don’t like late night toilet runs that aren’t on my own terms, but I still understand all the salt and all the rage and all the resentment towards the company all the same upon this news coming to light.
Aside from the obvious cash grab that this is, it’s also an obvious phishing expedition; Wendy’s looking for markets where they can hike up costs, based on the markets whose numbers don’t seem to be affected in customer order numbers regardless of price surging. So probably big cities full of people with deep pockets, where people already spend like they’re out of touch with the classes in a position lower than their own, will inevitably have their general costs raised permanently, because make no mistake, surge pricing will inevitably come to an end, once Wendy’s realizes the maximum price points every region could sustain while not losing too many customers.
So as much as I’d love to see this become the beginning of the end for the company as a whole, and we’ll see some Wendy’s burn to the ground as if there were a Black Lives Matter demonstration going tits up outside them, it’s unfortunately going to end up with a shitty fast food company getting all the information they need in order to jack up their costs and ultimately make even moar money, while the Americans that have no choice but to sustain themselves on fast food, suffer even more.
