From one of the other places: "Oh, so I had to wait 20 minutes in line and so you're going to double the price of my lunch? Genius."
Enshittification doesn't even seem like a strong enough word here, and I'm thinking about the people working the counter as well as the customers.
Wendy's: We're not going to have higher prices during busier periods; we're going to have lower prices during slower periods.
"This was misconstrued in some media reports as an intent to raise prices when demand is highest at our restaurants," the company statement read. "Digital menuboards could allow us to change the menu offerings at different times of day and offer discounts and value offers to our customers more easily, particularly in the slower times of day."
And we will fill our Frosty cups half-full, not half-empty.
As I saw someone point out on Twitter, many restaurants and bars implement this, they just call it "happy hour."
1: Who on earth would queue up for 20 minutes for a terrible hamburger? It's fast food! If it isn't fast, go somewhere else!
many restaurants and bars implement this, they just call it "happy hour."
Or "early bird special" or "midweek special" or "matinee pricing" or many, many other things. There aren't many companies that provide a time-limited service that don't do some sort of surge pricing. Restaurants, theatres, cinemas, train operators, airlines, bars, hairdresssers...
At the Wendy's around the corner from me, one of the two big menu video displays inside has been on a boot error screen for like three months. Unless you're ordering a salad/chili/potato, french fries, or a Frosty, you just have to know what you want going in, I guess.
They actually seem kinda put out at anybody who comes in rather than using the drive thru window.
Who on earth would queue up for 20 minutes for a terrible hamburger?
The lines for Whataburger here are unreal. People must be sitting in their cars for an hour, no joke.
Fast food chains are symbolically the towering pinnacle of reducing everything to cold business calculations. The treatment of employees, the diffusion of legal and financial responsibility through franchising, how the food works. And somehow changing prices over the course of a day is some kind of shocking red line?
Reminds me of the Fry & Laurie vox pop, Fry as cabbie going "Someday they'll be saying, 'Whatever happened to the traditional English Mcdonald's?'"
Wendy's used to have great chicken sandwiches but they ruined them.
re: 5
The barber that I go to charges more on the weekend. They aren't expensive, and I usually end up paying the cheaper rate anyway.
re: 5
The barber that I go to charges more on the weekend. They aren't expensive, and I usually end up paying the cheaper rate anyway.
Also don't fast food places adjust prices pretty frequently, and differ by location even within an area? Just not day-to-day.
I've never gone to a barber with special rate, but I guess I don't vary barbers often.
My barber was remarkably strict about mask wearing and I thought he was just very safety minded. It turned out he has a new kidney.
The innovation in surge pricing isn't the practice of varying the price at different times of the day, it's varying it at will without having to make a commitment to customers like "having a set schedule they can rely on." Call it "fuck you, you're going to pay whatever the fuck I tell you" pricing.
I don't think anyone has much ability to tell in advance if they're going to be coming in on a day prices have been rejiggered. I guess that happens less frequently though.
one of the two big menu video displays inside has been on a boot error screen for like three months
"I'm sorry, it says clearly right here that you have to pay '0x000a3' dollars for those fries. Sorry, I don't make the rules, take it up with corporate."
Anyway, I thought the traditional way for fast food to implement surge pricing was to charge the same but lower the quality of what you get outside of traditional meal hours. Sometimes you might luck into something relatively fresh* but often you get what's been sitting for a while.
*Whatever that means at a fast food place.
"All employees must wash their hands after using the restroom until 8:00pm."
We sell hamburgers 30 minutes before closing, but not the hot and juicy kind.
20 is the opposite of surge pricing. You're paying a penalty for arriving when it's not busy.
4.1: you have not been to an american fast food restaurant in the last decade, I see, and are taking the word "fast" literally. The big chains mostly don't strive for fast any more.
My local Wendy's was actually pretty awesome during the pandemic and since. I figure they have good management because everyone I encountered was friendly, helpful, just a totally different atmosphere from other fast food places. But it was noticeable when they stopped updating prices on outside menu signs (really?). Some parts of the norms of doing business definitely broke during covid. I'm not sure how widespread that is.
I feel like surge pricing wasn't controversial until big tech companies started applying opaque algorithms to it. Surge pricing of cabs during rush hour, published with a laminated piece of paper on the back of the seat? Sure, I'm all for it. But surge pricing of Uber/Lyft that somehow always results in a trip home being twice as expensive as a trip out, regardless of when they are? Bullshit.
One of the smarter things I read about it suggested that it might allow franchises to do things like discount Frosties on hot days. I can't get too worked up about this, although it's funny seeing a dynamic pricing model that I associate with ski resorts get applied to bad hamburgers.
"Digital menuboards could allow us to change the menu offerings at different times of day and offer discounts and value offers to our customers more easily, particularly in the slower times of day."
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
20 is the opposite of surge pricing.
I thought we had all agreed not to use the phrase literally.
Maybe instead of surge pricing for everyone they can go full dystopia and let people pay more to cut the line at busy times like Disney does.
That's basically what placing an order online is.
Except at Chipotle where it's like putting a chip on the roulette wheel.
The annoying one is Amazon, because it's hard to know their algorithm. If they post that 10am is extra cheap, then fine. It's the dynamic, minute by minute things that is awful and stressful, becaus3it's hard to be an informed consumer.
I'm trying to shop less at Amazon, but when I do order there, they never give me the wrong salsa.
30; Does that mean there's a small chance you' ll win a huge prize?
You can get a free meal if you stand by the shelf where they put the mobile orders.
34: And you have the nerve to complain about getting the wrong salsa
Topically, I have never been very happy with Wendy's since I left Columbus. They apparently watched them there closer to headquarters.
I certainly would not queue for 20 minutes to get a Wendy's meal under normal circumstances. Indeed, my chief annoyance on those occasions when I do patronize Wendy's is that I don't have time to get my body pop from the fancy body pop jukebox before my full order is ready. They totally redid the place after the George Floyd riots and now it operates much more efficiently than it did when I worked next door to the burnt precinct. Smells better too.
Sody pop that is. I do my popping, locking and up-rocking at Taco Bell.
The Wendy's by me doesn't have a jukebox.
Have people heard about the pirate Burger King of Pittsburgh?
That sounds like an impractically short coastline to cruise.
Yeah. Mostly they just lost their franchise and tried to keep going.
Some of the worst fast food I've ever had was in a former Burger King in Berkeley. I didn't even notice they weren't Burger King until I got inside because the outside of the building didn't look much different, although in retrospect they might have removed the lettering. The color scheme was the same and it wasn't until I saw the menu that I realized all the branding was gone. The burger was awful and they were closed by the end of the week. I strongly suspect they were just selling off the last bit of food supplies.
A recent thing that got me contemplating the ins and outs of surge pricing was looking for accommodations in central Texas around the eclipse. Everything elevated of course, but at the time still some fairly ordinary-priced places, but also some comparables 5-6x the already elevated baseline. Assume most of that was due to variations in rooms left at different placed, but was also wondering how much different algorithmic assumptions played a role (or also if there are differences in the degree of human twiddling/adjustment). My assumption is that there is no "expectation" that anyone would book now at the extremely high rate given much cheaper alternatives, but they are basically blocked out with calculation that some desperate/forced person will have to book at some elevated level at the last minute when everyplace is almost full.
I know this probably Surge 101 but wondering if there are approaches that fall on different sides of the thin line between smart and stupid.
OT: If a dog is wearing a head halter and jumping up on the members of the family that brought it into the Starbucks, the "Service Dog" vest is a lie, right?
I'm at a restaurant right now that advertises 1/2 off dinner for residents of various nearby towns on various nights of the week. We're from too far away to be included on any night. It seems like you'd want to induce people from further away to come for a deal, not offer it to people for whom the restaurant is convenient and might go there without a discount.
If you're from far away and are in the area, you can't go home and eat as easily.
If you're from far away and can pay more than the locals you're a gentrifier and you're going to hell.
It was on a road that's legendary for the obscene number of strip malls but also old school restaurants and diners. There are literally dozens of restaurants in the area so if you're from out of town you have quite a selection. (We went ro this one because it's big and we had a group of 14 including 8 11-12yo girls)
Speaking of old style restaurants, it recently came to my attention that the Excellent Diner of my home town has a story arc worthy of a Disney movie.
In my youth the Excellent Diner featured greasy food, poor sanitation and lighting, and surly elderly waitresses. One middle school English teacher used the name to illustrate the concept of irony.
It was one of the earliest of the mass-produced aluminum-sided railcar diners. It had come to our town by the commuter tracks in 1935, and was parked next to the train station for 60 years.
Plot twist: then it was loaded up onto train tracks again and shipped to Germany (fun movie senenes of the diner seeing New York City, then icebergs, then the port of Hamburg from a ship) where it reopened as part of a chain of fake American food places. The chain went out of business
Second plot twist: In 2002, the diner moved to France and joined the cast of EuroDisney, playing the role of Cafe des Caccadeurs ("Stuntman's Cafe"), apparently again selling crappy burgers, but more cleanly, and with 6 language menus.
In the movie version, it overheard New Jersey families talking about going to Disney, set its mind on the goal, and never gave up until its' dream came true.
Full story with photos and video of the move at
https://www.mrlocalhistory.org/excellent-diner/
A EuroDIsney verison of the story, which confusingly calls my home town "New Jersey, New York" at
https://photosmagiques.com/2012/05/02/the-interesting-history-of-cafe-des-cascadeurs/
Isn't most of New Jersey just a suburb of either New York or Philadelphia?
Cafe des Cacadeurs is an excellent pun and probably what the staff call it behind the scenes.
Luca Brasi isn't dead, he's just pining for the barrens.
||
"Wigs, double bladders, bulging lobes, and gossamer bladders were all on the table" at the workshop.40 It was stressful for everyone involved because the team knew they had to leave the meeting with a design that would absolutely, positively solve the problem--a "kill-all" solution, Sabahi called it|>
Do I want to know what that is about?
If the rest of the internet is any guide, 59 is somehow about Dune 2.
OT: Today I was in Lowe's and by the register there were cans of oxygen. About the size of spray paint cans, but with a small breathing cone on the end. My first thought was that it was to be used to send workers into a space without adequate ventilation so they can try not to die while doing an impression of Dick Van Patten in Space Balls. But then I remembered it was right by the register, so it was probably just for impulse-buying health fraud. They had a big label saying the cans were light because oxygen is weightless. I feel like complaining about that to someone, but I won't. I'm now wondering if anyone died of covid while trying to breath OTC oxygen, but I don't want to google that because back when lots of people were dying on respirators, it gave me nightmares.
I saw them in the supermarket when I visited Colorado which at least sort of makes sense.
Yeah, there's lots of reasons for you to visit Colorado.
My wife went to an oxygen bar the other day. Apparently that's a thing now? It was part of the package at the float spa, which I guess is also a thing.
You don't see root beer floats anymore.
No, they float you in epsom salt, not root beer
That sounds awful even with ice cream.
Its like the Dead Sea in a pod. Apparently it un-fucks up your back.
No cheating:
The president said he also favored the Gamma Ray Observatory because of his interest in black holes, about which he had been reading of late.Which president?
Sounds like Reagan. Like the way he decided to negotiate with Gorbachev because he saw a TV movie that said nuclear war is bad.
It's cheating slightly but assuming it's the Compton GRO that went up at some point in the 1990s. So it probably isn't Clinton or anyone subsequently because the lead time on these things is so long that the choice would have been made years before on which project to pursue.
I'm going to say Reagan.
Good thinking, but no. Also, 72.
It's why all those people wanted to have a beer with him.
No and no. Drumroll for nuclear submariner Jimmy Carter.
Well, I would have preferred to have a beer with Jimmy.
I assume Carter drank beer because of the swamp rabbit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-68iTvhWNB0&t=7s
Carter is still the only President with any background in science, correct? Except for maybe Thomas Jefferson?
75: Carter, then? Ford had other things on his mind, Nixon hated space flight, and I cannot believe that the decision on CGRO was taken as far back as 1968.
Billy did.
I went to summer camp and there was a counselor whose last name was Carter. One of the dads joked with her, "Was your dad the president or the drunk?" Unfortunately, it was the drunk.
I liked Billy. Roger Clinton was a pale echo.
76 was totally my thought too. You don't have to read a book about black holes... pulp fiction? Scientific American? Comics? Your kids' magazines?
Weekly Reader had vibrant coverage of black holes back in the late 70s/early 80s.
I can totally believe that Ronald Regan read a story about black holes in Readers Digest.
Too many big words in Weekly Reader.