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It basically suggests as much in the closing statements. That's exactly what they'd do.

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.

People heard “dynamic pricing” and immediately assumed “surge pricing.”

Dynamic pricing, especially in retail, is often used to milk your wallet another way - sales, promos, and bundles. You’re incentivized to buy more.

Given that the press release talked about providing value and incentives to come back, I will be money that this was an algorithmic promo engine. Wendy’s will still get more money from you, but that’s because they want to manipulate your purchasing behavior, not raise prices at noon.

If they make the same amount by selling less units that makes a hell of a lot more sense.

The average person probably wouldn’t notice besides “damn inflation making stuff expensive”, and they may lose a small percentage of their customers, but if the price difference makes up for it then they’re golden.

Yes. Theoretically they can drive people away and make more money if the people they haven’t driven away spend more for less goods.

Let’s imagine on a normal lunch hour I sell 100 burgers at lunch for $4. If I raised my price to $4.50, I’d only sell 80 burgers. If I raised the price to $5 then I’d only sell 50 burgers If a burger costs me $3 then I normally make $1 a burger, but at the middle price I make $1.50, and $2 at the high price.

100 burger x $1 = $100 profit
80 burgers x $1.5 = $120 profit
50 burgers x $2 = $100 profit

The trick is figuring out how changing price will affect demand without pissing all your potential customers off. Restaurants already do dynamic pricing with Happy Hour and Taco Tuesdays etc. They give a “discount” to entice more people to come in when they are less busy.

What I think they meant to have rollout is to potentially raise their prices across the board and then offer discounts at off-peak times.

Functionally it's the exact same thing as what leaked but is way easier to sell as value added to potential customers.

Thinking about it more; I guess it all comes down to their marketing of it, as long as their "full" price is still competitive. Limited time offers are good motivators.

Being suspicious of corporations is great, but it does seem like a lot of people to take any announcement by a big company, interpret it in the least charitable way possible (even if it doesn't make sense), and then get mad based on the interpretation they came up with.

If people were really against variable prices as a concept, they'd already be boycott every business with a happy hour, but they're not. They're just assuming Wendy's plans to dramatically raise prices and was dumb enough to draw attention to it. And really, even without an announcement, raising prices beyond the rate of inflation doesn't make sense, because if they're remotely competent, they're already charging as much as people are willing to pay. Wendy's has every reason to believe that just arbitrarily raising prices faster then the industry as a whole will hurt their bottom line.

food is a very price sensitive industry

Nah, I think they were really going to try and introduce surge pricing until they saw how intense the backlash was, then decided to try and walk it back.

Maybe you are right, but I have a tough time giving these giant companies the benefit of doubt when it's already been shown there was price gouging across the board in the middle of a pandemic.

Yeah corporations suck but I think you're right. This plan was just poorly worded. Congestion pricing does not make sense for a market with so much competition.