Yep, happy hours are already well-understood and accepted. As long as they make their hours clear and obvious and standard across their restaurant line.

Shifting to ridesharing's surge pricing is much different, especially if the user has to find out the pricing when they arrive at the restaurant. Ride sharing apps fundamentally sidestep this because you see the surge pricing without incurring a cost, and you can compare to competitors easily.

But with all the restaurants wanting more mobile orders, this may split the customer base in weird ways.

>Ride sharing apps fundamentally sidestep this because you see the surge pricing without incurring a cost

Somewhat, but if your plan was to ride share home your choice might just be incur the cost or gamble that waiting will make it better and not worse.

"Happy Hour" usually implies alcohol, which obviously Wendy's doesn't support.

But your idea is actually really interesting, maybe even innovative. Instead of the constant price changes from a digital menu, a fast food restaurant embracing "happy hour" in the context of their own menu offerings. I think this could maybe play.

> "Happy Hour" usually implies alcohol, which obviously Wendy's doesn't support.

Many, many restaurants have "happy hour" menu pricing to encourage people to come at off-peak times, without necessarily having any correlation with alcohol. I don't think anyone would question the naming.

Taco Bell already has "Happier Hour" for their drinks, which are all non-alcoholic, so near terminology is already in play. I'm curious if Taco Bell would try to claim ownership over the term. In light of them opposing Taco John's owning a trademark on Taco Tuesdays, it would be difficult for them to justify.

Some taco bells also serve alcohol. They are generally called Taco Bell cantinas

Agreed - this plays to how discounts attract people. I think an individualized "happy hour" could also be interesting, e.g. letting people pick the weekday they have discounted so they can form habits.

A movie theater near me is now charging more money to see Dune than other movies. The "cheaper" movies are certainly not at a price point I'd consider discounted. It's just an extra fee to see Dune straight up, like the other fees you pay if you want to see it in their premium screen format.

Wendys has raised prices already, and they will raise prices again at the time this launches for whatever they consider their premium hours.

I wonder to what extent that reflects higher prices being charged by the studio for showing the movie, and to what extent that's just raising prices because they expect people will still pay it?

I'd be happy to reassign blame away from the theater if it's not their doing, but either way I'm not going there anymore.

Sonic has been doing this for at least 20 years, probably longer. As a college student, Sonic happy hour was a great time to go get food not so great for you

My (uneducated) guess is that Wendy's has a demand smoothing problem and some high up executive read a book on dynamic pricing and reached for the most complicated solution to implement it. This brings to mind the old chestnut about the Russian and American space programs looking to solve the problem of writing in zero-G.

When have you ever seen a slammed Wendy’s? I’m sure there are, but I’ve never seen them…

It’s always in and out or chick fil a that is busy…

Yeah never seen a Wendy’s with chick f volumes