Wendy's is under fire after CEO Kirk Tanner announced during a board meeting that the fast food chain would begin testing surge pricing, causing uproar from customers around the country.
While the comment has since been walked back following the backlash, Tanner himself has now been subjected to dynamic pricing of his own, reducing his base salary from $1 million to his new market value of 10 cents.
"Typically, CEOs are supposed to make businesses more money, not less," said business expert Richard Lawson. "When customers learn that going to your restaurant for breakfast, lunch, or dinner will be more expensive because other people also happen to want breakfast, lunch, or dinner when it's not 3 a.m., they'll go anywhere else."
The surge pricing concept has been most popularized by rideshare companies such as Lyft and Uber, which increase in price during events such as large music festivals and major league sports.
Unfortunately, Wendy's is not Coachella, and Kirk Tanner is not Beyoncé.
"I've been going to Wendy's since I was a kid. Dave Thomas never would've allowed the idea to even cross his mind," said Denton, Texas' Peter Williams. "For the last 26 years, every time I go to Wendy's, I'm almost always getting big meals for my wife and I — it's the only way I'm comfortable showing love. This stunt almost ruined that for us."
Now, Williams says, the 10-cent salary is more than justified.
"If I expect the food to cost even more if I want to eat between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., I'll go somewhere else that will appreciate my $140 per month," threatened Williams. "If they'd followed through, I wouldn't have gone to Wendy's for as much as a 30-cent sauce packet – they wouldn't get a penny out of me. Considering that, a whole dime seems pretty damn generous."
Some, like 24-year-old Chris Gardner, are frustrated after the false alarm led them to buy freezers full of standard-priced Wendy's offerings in order to resell them during peak hours.
"I made about $13,000 from investing in crypto, so I used it to buy an extra freezer big enough for a large restaurant and spent the $8,000 I had left on Baconators, Dave's Doubles, spicy chicken nuggets, and the entire catalogue of baked potatoes," began Gardner. "I thought that if I waited, the same purchase would at least quadruple in value. What am I supposed to do with all of this now? If people wanted to buy frozen, but standard-priced Wendy's, they can still just go to Wendy's. I can't even do that," lamented the Florida native before going on to explain that he's no longer welcome at his local Wendy's after ordering over 1500 items at the drive-thru.
The mega chain can only hope it will make a quick recovery from the national rage-inducing announcement. And for his sake, Kirk Tanner will be praying that next quarter's results will bump up his salary to a literal quarter.
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Photo courtesy of Hullian111 via CC BY-SA 4.0
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