[serf]

> I know it's marketing nonsense, but really, how?

I suppose that there is a segment of the fast-food-burger market that would choose Wendy's over a competitor if the price of food drops a slight bit during off-peak hours.

However, reversed, I have a hard time imagining that they will be able to squeeze what customer base they have even more by creating surge pricing increases during peak hours.

Maybe they'll only adopt the discount side to try to aid customer volume during off-peak hours? That seems reasonable.

[fy20]

There's a McDonalds near me, where if you go at 2pm on Saturdays, you are going to be waiting in the drive-thru queue for around half an hour.

I'd imagine if they put the prices up by $1 most people would not care. Of course they would lose some customers, but the overall profit for the surge period will be higher.

This optimization is commonly done in SaaS businesses - it's better to serve 10 customers at $100 a month, than 50 at $20 a month.