That’s a pretty fast turn around on walking it back. I guess the backlash was intense. Too little too late though, I’m done with Wendy’s. I don’t care how they spin it now, we all know this wasn’t ever going to benefit customers or reduce strain on staff, it was just a scheme to price gouge during lunch/dinner rush. The fact that they even considered doing this is enough reason to never give them my business again.
Kirk Tanner’s only been CEO for 3 weeks and immediately started in with this fuckery. It’ll be interesting to see how many more Mooches he lasts.
This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I considered them an upper tier fast food place for decades. Past few years or so they have shit on all that.
They’ve been nearly dead to me for awhile, but they are fully dead to me now.
Edited to add: Arby’s is expensive as hell, but at least their food is consistently good - at least has been every time I’ve had it. But even arby’s is really close to the “I could get that from a bar cheaper and better” line for the stuff I really enjoy from them (like their surprisingly good gyro). At least there you can fall back on the good old roast beef sandwich and it’s not too too bad price-wise.
Good call. As with every other industry where bullshit rent-seeking has taken hold, the attempted fee tack-on and walkback are an experiment in how far they can go before appeasing customers. It’s about testing waters before wearing people down. Rest assured, the one CEO’s peers have taken note of this noble effort. Eventually, as they see it, one of them will succeed in making it stick, paving the way for them all to do the same. The first CEO to make it stick will get additional bonuses, praise, and a higher level of notoriety within their rarefied circles.
That was absolutely their plan all along.
If they wanted to do time-based discounts, they could just blast a 10% off coupon to every app user in a specific geographic area.
Plus they get the bonus of user data when people sign up for the app that they can sell to the government leverage for non-industry profit streams.
True disgusting profiteering.
Coming soon a quiet price hike followed by timed “discounts” at every Wendy’s location.
I can’t understand why they didn’t start it this way in the 1st place.
In the UK most pub chains do 2 for 1 main meals Monday to Friday in late afternoon - early evening.
They will slowly ease their customers into this new pricing idea and then slowly raise the prices higher and higher.
It turns out that “we want to charge you more for eating at a normal time” was a poor choice for the fast food restaurant. Who knew?
