the price of your meal at the fast food chain Wendy's could cost you a little more next year but it all depends on what time of day you order the company is planning to roll out a dynamic pricing model for its menu that means prices will change throughout the day based on a few different factors Jolene Kent explains taking a bigger bite out of Shoppers incomes the most in three decades and be prepared to Shell out more you'll never guess what we're doing to the bacon eater Wendy's announced it'l
l start testing dynamic in on digital menu boards next year a form of surge pricing like uber and lft artificial intelligence will suggest menu items and determine whether to raise prices based on demand location and time Wendy says for example it might suggest a cool Frosty on a warm summer day this will allow us to be more Nimble and flexible with pricing why introduce this when customers can easily just go somewhere else clearly the company is trying to find ways to boost its share price and
improve its profit margins but but it could come at the expense of losing some faithful customers cereal beyond the burgers Kellogg is also Under Fire after its CEO suggested consumers struggling with inflation could eat cereal for dinner if you think about the cost of cereal for a family versus what they might otherwise do that's going to be much more affordable backlash online was Swift this fool making 4 million bucks a year you think he's feeding his kids cereal for dinner it's a tough sell
because cereal prices have surged more than 25% compared to pre pandemic well it's Rings a little bit like the French Revolution let them eat cereal and it does sort of not read the room very well families are really struggling to afford bringing food to the table to feed everyone at the table and now they're suggesting cereal for dinner it just seems like he's missing the point here and Jolene Kent joins us now from Los Angeles so uh the customers are going to vote when this thing gets rolled o
ut but what do we know are they ready for something like this [Applause] well customers are very price sensitive especially when it comes to fast food and Wendy's has had a bit of a struggle in uphill climb compared to its competitors in recent years and so the idea here is to test this out Wendy's tells us that you could possibly see the price fluctuate of on a frosty for example on a warm summer day now these types of things though can be very sensitive when it comes to inflation even though i
nflation has steadied out a little bit back in January it was 3.1% we're still coming coming off of two very big years of inflation that have really affected grocery prices and restaurant prices as well so it really is up to the customer and of course a lot of fast food customers are not very sticky they will happily go elsewhere uh to give another brand their business so just in time pricing is there any evidence that Wendy's is doing anything else here other than basically just trying to squee
ze out as much uh as they can from the consumer by by time shifting these prices I mean is there anything else they might be trying to do push customers to other hours of the day uh make them order more um in the Drive-Thru any other um reason they might be doing this yeah it's possible that they are definitely looking for more efficiencies at Wendy's they're investing about $30 million in different kinds of Technology including Ai and this surge pricing testing and so what we know is that yes t
his could really move a customer to maybe spend it a different time but what outside of Wendy's are saying is look this really could be a big risk to the customer and because they're not willing to pay as much when it comes to that lunch rush fast food is known as budget and a budget friendly option and so you could easily lose customers that way Wendy is certainly gambling here but you could also see if this works well other fast food chains potentially adopting it jene Ken in Los Angeles thank
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Comments
As a loyal Wendy's customer, it is time to find another place to eat😢 Sounds like they need to fire their board of directors.
Fast food restaurants are a dying breed now…door dash killed it really. 15$ for McDonald’s meal in MN is outrageous!
I plan to test a boycott of Wendy's then
As a paying consumer, I'd say you'd be better off cutting your multiple million bonuses than pre-planning to loot us.
Yeah, that’s called price gouging. Not price surging or dynamic pricing.
A $5, $7 or $10 meal is the same food/labor cost regardless of what time you order/eat it. I wonder if they will pay their employees more during peak hours, I doubt it! I will not be eating at Wendy’s.
No doubt they'll charge more when it's busy, but they won't actually charge less when it isn't busy. The customers will pay more, guaranteed.
These companies forget if they do this we will just start making burgers and fresh cut fries at home! Absolute foolishness!
Well, I already don't eat out very often, and it's been about 1 yr since I went to Wendy's. I like Wendy's, but fast food has gotten too damn expensive so I cook at home, which is also too damn expensive these days.
Wendy’s prices are already too high, I’ll pass on them
We have the ceo of Kellogg cereal telling citizens that the poor can eat cereal for dinner if it’s too expensive, and now Wendys saying that they’re going to raise the price of food based on your enjoyment of the food? What is this? The Great Depression round 2?
You know it won't be long now until other types of businesses and industries will do the same. The airlines have been doing it for decades. Price surging is almost like price gouging.
They spent 20 Million dollars on this program instead of paying their workers better.
I'm sure they're already charging more than they need to. How do we even know if the prices need to be increased? Are the prices only getting increased when there's demand or when they want more money? When they mention shareholders you already know they don't care about ripping off the consumer.
All these companies could raise their share price by trimming the executive bloat
it would have been more PR friendly to just say they would give a discount during non peak hours.
It use to be you got a discount on food near the closing hours that benefited both the customer and the store owner. Greed has now taken over the industry!
I'll start "dynamic patronage" at fast food restaurants.
This is one more reason to choose a new place to eat.
Want more customers. lower prices, make better food. Pretty simple. Greedflation out of hand these days, no accountability.