Fast food joint Wendy's to implement "Surge Pricing"
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It’s not quite equal because good Fast food branches will increase the number of employees during those “surge” times as well (lunch time, dinner, etc).
Now the cost has to be averaged over the whole day but if you can surge the price by 50 cents during lunch they can offer 25 cents less during lower times.
In a pre-COVID world where people still went to offices and ate out for lunch this would work. Not so much today.
Frankly they don’t even need ai for this, let alone computers. Places used to do this by hand with separate lunch and dinner prices.
Lunch and dinner prices make sense when you make food to order, not when it's made by assembly line. Fast food was invented specifically to undercut sit-down restaurants.
Fast food assembly lines allowed them to deliver at scale better than regular restaurants, true. But lunch and dinner prices (as well as different/restricted menus) are practiced by both types for the same reason, economics. McDonald's franchisees hated having all day breakfasts even though corporate insisted it brought in more people and that only reverted when Covid came along. My local McDonalds has certain items that are only available during prime business hours and not after a certain time. The prices have also been changing on at least a weekly basis if not more often as the price for my Saturday breakfast burrito habit keeps changing. Honestly - I can't see Wendy's or any other restaurant truly implementing "surge" pricing and this is just a euphemism for intra-day price changes to get on the buzzword bingo chart, with AI tossed in for good measure. How's it going to work with 20 people in line and person #9 gets his burger for $5 but person #10 gets charged $9 for theirs and poor person #20 gets charged $13!!
Except that makes no sense. They make a lot more money during peak hours - it's more expensive compared to profit to stay open during the slow hours, because costs stay roughly the same while income falls dramatically. Their best profit hours are the same hours they want to increase prices on, they just think everybody is fucking stupid.