The American Prospect The internet nearly exploded this February when Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner announced that the fast-food chain to embrace “surge pricing,” raising the prices of a burger and a Frosty in line with customer demand. The company had included a mention of “dynamic pricing” in its fourth-quarter earnings presentation, but after the kerfuffle that the announcement of its new digital menu displays had been “misconstrued in some media reports as an intent to raise prices when demand is highest,” and said that it had “no plans to do that.” Instead, the new system would merely allow Wendy’s to “offer discounts and value offers to our customers more easily.
” The snark, which included (D-MA), ranged from pure outrage to questions of whether the company would also “surge pay” to its low-wage workforce. But it’s not like Wendy’s invented price-gouging. A quarter-century earlier, Coca-Cola’s CEO about equipping its vending machines with thermometers, and triggering them to raise the price of a soda on a hot day.
People hated that too; we just didn’t have social media then. Wendy’s and Coke aside, surge pricing is . Since deregulation in the late 1970s, airlines have used a form of it, with flights costing more at short notice or at high-demand times of year.
Now, the practice has crept into golf courses, hotel rooms, gyms, pubs, and concert venues. Amazon alters its prices every ten minutes. Like Wendy’s, brick-and-mortar retailers ar.
