Dear Wendy’s CEO,
This is not Uber. This is a Wendy’s.
I'll simply never go again myself.
I haven't been in years. Their food has been terrible ever since they changed their fries so many years ago. I used to eat there when I could get jr bacon cheeseburgers for 99 cents but now even that's like $3.
Yeah, just a run of the mill chicken sandwich combo is 15$ and it looks like a toddler slapped it together with food he found in the trash.
This new CEO of Wendy's would be wise to remember that fast food is a convenience not a necessity. I've got a nice little propane grill in the backyard and I know how to make a square patty. I don't need you, you need me.
Where I am, the price of fast food is just about equal to some restaurants. There's no point in doing fast food anymore.
There is a local hamburger joint 3 blocks from my house that is far superior in taste, with lower prices, why the fuck would I ever go to endys?
Same with me in Canada. I go local almost all the time other than my annual Burger King impossible Whopper
I remember when Dave Thomas was still alive. I loved Wendy's quality over most everyone else, so I would prefer them even if something else was closer or cheaper.
THE VERY NEXT WEEK after Dave died, there was a very noticeable drop in burger patty size and quality. I basically stopped eating at Wendy's after that.
I'm sure this is also what Dave would have wanted.
Dave Thomas is up in hamburger heaven with a list of mfers he's gonna beat with a spatula for ruining his restaurants over the last 22 years.
We're so bad at employee management and don't want to pay a living wage, so we'll charge you extra when we're busy. But wait, there's more, we're still not going to pay a living wage to hire more employees, so you're not only going to pay more, but your wait will still be the same.
Why not just hike the prices and be done with it?
They will, after everyone tells them how much they hate this, they'll 'backtrack' to higher pricing. They're letting their first idea eat the hate and resistance so they can execute plan B.
I think this is exactly the plan. If the prices are constantly fluctuating, it will be easy to slowly rise them by a bit every week without everyone noticing.
Boiling frogs is literally becoming a business plan
Damn, I like some of their food. I guess this is a good reason to stop going there.
Fuck you, Wendy's.
Patronize your local burger joints instead, it's an excellent opportunity to get to know the local businesses.
In my town there are only tourist traps and major chains left. One of the last mom and pop style restaurant that was around for 100 years was demolished.
Gross.
Yeah, and I'm introducing "no more eating at Wendy's" pricing.
Wendy's seems blissfully unaware that's there's plenty of adequate competitors in the burger market. It's a great time to get to know your local restaurants.
McDonald's is already out of the running. A mcdouble and medium fry is 8 bucks.
Burger King is my go to, Impossible Whopper is great for vegan me and it's reasonable still. I mostly go to local places though. It's worth it.
Theyre probably hoping people wont notice
In an environment of painful (almost insulting) food price increases everywhere, Wendy’s decides to remove price predictability from the equation, ensuring that I never know what I’m going to pay, except that I can guarantee I’m going to be gouged when I most want to eat.
Yeah, I don’t care what they sell. I don’t want to be treated like that.
The next logical step is to use facial recognition to ~~discriminate~~ estimate how much money is in each customer's wallet to dynamically price the food.
Imagine walking in, seeing a price on the board, waiting behind someone with a big order, and by the time you get to the counter the price has increased. I forsee yelling and fights happening in lines.
I foreseee never stepping into a restaurant like that.
They will stop doing this when the poorest people are just sitting around the restaurant waiting for the price to go down.
If you only had $3 and the price of a burger was above that, you would just wait. The restaurant is sometimes nicer than sitting outside. They can't kick you out, because you're waiting to order. Now they're going have like 3-5 bums waiting around for the price to drop.
It's just stupid. Although I did go to a bar like that once that was pretty fun. It had a stock market board with drink prices that went up and down. You would go up there hoping to get a particular drink, but come back with something else because it was half off. It'd be like "tequila shots $7" but "red wine $3.50"! Wine it is!
People are not gonna like that. They will pull into the drivethrough line to buy the same thing they paid $3 for the day before, and leave or buy something cheaper when they see it's $4 right now.
Most of them are going to be on their lunch break, and have already wasted 15 minutes waiting in line to order. So they're going to order anyways, because they're stuck. They won't have time to get in the new line somewhere else. They just won't come back afterwards.
What a bullshit idea. I fucking hate this timeline we’re on.
A Dave's Single combo already costs 12 bucks here. Fuck off Wendy's, like hell we're paying more for that.
Edit: And that's for a small combo. Want a large? Fuck you, pay 15.
... planning to invest approximately $20 million to roll out digital menu boards...
Wendy’s will also invest an additional $10 million over two years...
Have you tried not spending $30 million dollars to sell hamburgers?
I mean, holy shit. You sell burgers and fries. Does everything need to be digitally and AI enhanced?
A spokesperson for Wendy's confirmed the news with Food & Wine, stating the company is focused on providing "great-tasting" food and is "making a significant investment" to grow its digital business, including rolling out digital menu boards in some U.S. restaurants. "Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing a variety of enhanced features on these digital menuboards like dynamic pricing, different offerings in certain parts of the day, AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling based on factors such as weather. Dynamic pricing can allow Wendy's to be competitive and flexible with pricing, motivate customers to visit and provide them with the food they love at a great value. We will test a number of features that we think will provide an enhanced customer and crew experience."
The digital menu boards are there so they don't have to hire as many cashiers.
Baconator ain’t worth it
Wendy’s won’t last. Their quality is so bad, their menu is terrible, they deserve to die and this will help.
Cool, guess I will continue to avoid fast food.
Because only rich people are entitled to access to food.
A combo anywhere I go is over 10 bucks. What do they want from us, consumers are already being overmilked like a skinny cow
Wouldn't this run afoul of most states weights and meaures?
This is great! Considering I haven't had Wendys for years and this is another reason not to!
At least with Uber it made some sense. Higher prices and this payments to drivers was meant to compel more drivers to head out to pick up the increased demand.
But here, there are no surge wages, nor are employees coming in to cover a rush.
Even McDonald's is seeing lowered sales due to these high prices. People are only willing to pay so much for grease with a side of "chicken."
Wendy’s has been going downhill ever since Dave died.
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