If people didn’t keep paying for it, it wouldn’t work.
Unfortunately it’s a sound business model because people will absolutely fork over the money regardless of how much they bitch about it in the process.
The enshitification will continue indefinitely until people stop buying the shit.
Luckily, at least for now, most people can sail the high seas, or hit the secondary market, or cook the things they want in order to avoid the price gouging and enshittification. You can get ten frozen burger patties at the grocery store fairly economically in most of the country and then spice and cook them up yourself.
When Trump is reelected in November I expect it to get much worse and very fast.
That’s far from true. Millions live in food deserts and the working poor often don’t have the money and/or energy for it after working extreme hours for atrociously low wages.
And that’s not even taking into account those of us who are unable to cook even simple dishes for ourselves due to disability.
When Trump is reelected in November I expect it to get much worse and very fast.
They’re outright accepting less customers in favor of those willing to pay higher prices.
That’s great for a quarter, maybe a year, maybe 5. At what point does it catch up and you’ve trained everyone to stop eating fast food because you wanted to charge more than people can dedicate to food?
Fast food is already almost as expensive as regular restaurant food… the only benefit is the drive through for those in a hurry travelling through town. If it gets any more expensive it will be easier to just phone in your order at a regular restaurant for pick up.
Alternate timeline: Surge priced fast-food becomes a status symbol. People buy used Wendy’s packaging in order to hide their homemade food and not be made fun of.
I cannot fathom how no one else sees this. They’re trading low-value customers for high-value customers. Sometimes this makes sense. I did it when I had a little PC repair business. Low-value customers were a PITA and didn’t make me any money, not worth my time.
But maybe they’re smarter than you and I? Lemmy tells me cheap fast food is a right, as if there’s no other choice. If that’s how people are thinking and acting, instead of shying away from fast food prices? Fuck 'em. Let them pay.
People are even less price sensitive at restaurants. They’ve been doing this longer than fast food has.
Last week I spent $21 on two California rolls and a miso soup. I felt scammed and won’t go back there.
I spent half an hour today searching my area for good lunch specials. Ended up getting a cup of soup and a scoop of chicken salad for $12.
I’ll have to travel about 20 minutes to another side of the city to try some lunch specials at a Chinese place and see if that’s any better.
This situation IS getting ridiculous enough that someone can come along with an actual good deal and make money on volume again. But in this decade that’s a radical, risky business plan.
Sushi is expensive in general. I can’t really comment on soup and chicken salad since I’m not much of a fan of either. I usually go for Chinese or Thai for the best deals. When fast food is charging $6 just for a burger, I’d rather pay $10 for Pad Thai. Yes it’s more expensive, but the value is much better.
I think we need to seperate the ability for a corporation to make decisions of its own free will from the notion of fairness and equity for a society which allowed a franchise like Wendy’s to be created. They’re giving many of their supporters the middle finger after thinking they found a winning lottery ticket.
I can understand being pissed off about it as someone who isn’t rich, but I also understand it’s a system I have no control over other than what I choose to buy myself. I won’t support Wendys if they want to choose profits over people. It’s sad to see more of the world turn into a heartless corporate hellhole.
I personally hope they got their numbers wrong and they fail.
PC repair is a low volume, high touch, high skill business. If you set aside a single $100 customer for a $500 one, it can work since both exist.
Hamburgers of the Wendy’s grade are a volume and convenience game. For every thousand $4 customers, can they replace them with 667 $6 customers?
I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon in the last couple years. The cheapest options and biggest chains ramped their prices much faster than the places a notch or two better. The gap has closed enough that suddenly those “notch or two better” places are more competitive than before-- if it will be $50 instead of $30 to take the family to Wendy’s, why not stretch to $65 for get Five Guys or a local place instead.
Training is a great, important word here. There’s a huge lag between setting prices and having them affect your business. Most people will try a new place once, regardless of the price. The first time they go they’ll judge the price by the style of restaurant. It’s not until the second time they’ll factor the price into their decision. Companies only care about “training” when it goes the other way, when it’s a good reputation they can liquidate through enshittification.
When they’re on the downside of training all they think about is “MONEY NOW” while they’re effectively scamming their customers and slowly destroying their customer base.
There’s a hot chicken place near me that’s having exactly this problem. The downtown, novel location in the middle of the walking market (a tourist attraction) was a bit expensive, but good. They expanded out to the suburbs, kept the downtown prices, and no longer give sweet tea for free. And somehow they’re surprised that less than a year after opening they’re lucky to have three customers at once. I’ll give you a hint. You’re charging $10 for a chicken breast on a slice of wonder bread. Chicken used to be popular because it was cheap.
Compare to this 2005 Popeye’s commercial. 11 pieces of chicken for $10. Not a single breast. Look me in the eye and tell me prices have actually risen 11x in 20 years.
They’re outright accepting less customers in favor of those willing to pay higher prices.
This is exactly it. I have seen folks saying we are entering a new kind of economy: a kind of “whale economy”. After seeing it work for mobile apps and games, other normal companies are wising up to the fact that your revenue will be the same if you charge 10 times what you were and lose 9/10 of your customers as a result… but your expenses will be lower. less labor, less equipment, less materials, less time. The 1/10 who stay and pay the high prices out themselves as “whales”, the people who probably have enough money to never care and will probably just keep spending even if the prices keep going up and up and up.
The majority of us are about to become low value customers… and therefore, not have easy access to common goods and services any longer. This will make perfect short term sense to each company doing this, but will promptly collapse what’s left of our economy into ruin.
I agree it sucks. But I can understand the rationale. At peak times, if people try to go to Wendy’s, and it’s too busy, they go somewhere else. At this point the demand is higher than supply. Clearly increasing cost will create more profit.
Long term they are probably hoping that people decide to not all come in a peak times, and the peak is more spread out. This way lines are never long enough for people to just say fuck this and then leave. Less lost sales = more profit.
In reality I can see people just not going, so I agree with you that long term they see less sales. But honestly who really knows, people can be pretty irrational.
How many people are buying 24 packs of Coca-Cola at $14 when it used to be $7 just five years ago.
I’ve cut way back and only buy during sales. It’s not that I can’t afford it. It’s that if I do continue to buy, then they’ll start charging $21/case. The price will keep going up until people react.
What is it going to take for people to just refuse to pay these prices?
I actually quit drinking soda because of that. I was spending 20-30 bucks a week on Coke, and when it hit me that I could just not drink coke and save almost $1500 more a year, it was an easy choice.
why limit opportunistic gouging to airline tickets and private taxis? You want food now? Pay extra. You want hospital care now? Pay extra. You want a fire truck or an ambulance or the police now? Best not be poor.
Isn’t this kind of the situation in America already? With people fearing bankruptcy from ambulance rides and all. Oh, and tipping for restaurants/delivery services like uber eats and instacart. While it’s going to the worker instead of the corporation (hopefully), I’ve read enough stories about food being held hostage unless a tip is given.
How about we try it with wages too, Wendy’s? It’s a busy time and you REALLY need me to finish a project? Well, my pay just surged, so pay up or come back later when I have nothing to do. How’s that for an “enhanced feature” you greedy fucking pricks?
Don’t give them ideas. They’ll do it, and the lunch rush is the only time fast food workers will make $15 for a single hour. The rest of the time will be $7.25 and used to justify the ridiculously low minimum wage. "But we usually pay more than that. We need the flexibility or we’d have to cut hours!*
Sit down restaurants still have lunch pricing now. Lunch is generally a smaller portion, not a lower price for the same thing.
Fast food has been priced the same throughout the day as long as I remember.
This is neither of those things. This is pricing based on current demand and charging more for the same thing just because other people want the same thing. For fast food, higher demand is generally better because the ratio of income to staff is higher than during slow periods.
The only time I’ve seen a line at my local Wendy’s was when McDonald’s was closed for a water leak and burger king didn’t have any employees to stay open.
There isn’t much traffic, we need to increase the price per order to keep our profits up… Errr our employees “paid”.
There’s a rush, we need to increase the price per order because demand is so high and we want more money, errr to better pay our… Wait no we just like money.
I’m not driving to lunch when I don’t know how much lunch is going to cost, gas price changes are already wild enough.
I made my last order from Wendy’s over 5 years ago, when I watched them give my order to the person in front of me then tried to give me their order…and when I wouldn’t take it because it wasn’t right and asked for what I actually ordered, I was told that they would redo it but it would be at the end of their list, and that it was my fault they gave it to the wrong person.
Like…I had no reason to doubt that maybe this guy ordered the same combo off the menu, no unique changes to the way it came. But yeah, it’s my fault for not jumping in and taking it from him.
Ended up taking me like 40 minutes to get a burger and fries, and when I finally got it, it still wasn’t right, and the manager tried to lecture me about how to avoid this in the future.
As it has happened I’ve been able to successfully avoid another Wendy’s fuck up ever since by the weird trick of never fucking going to Wendy’s.
Sorry sir, you’re going to be assessed a “late night” surcharge to make up for the dramatically reduced volume. It’s only fair, seeing as we need to pay the employees to basically just sit around waiting for you at this hour.
Can’t figure out how to add additional customers or create incentive to get them to spend more money? Well easy then. Take your most time crunched and trapped customer base and make them pay more.
This is simple price gouging to increase profit margins, and because it happens at whim of the business it’s hard to avoid. But I bet if you get the app that lets them track you better than I’m sure they will let you know and heck even offer a discount just above the old price still.
A clever way would be having the original true $1 menu be available with any purchase that includes a numbered combo but fuck originality or thinking when you have a degree that says you are right and your only thought is increase cost.
I had a recent project where we made eLearning courses for an MBA program and this is right on the money. They throw around concepts like “consumer surplus”, which basically means “consumers haven’t been bled dry for every penny they have”, they’ll do anything to get that last dollar.
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