I have in-depth knowledge of how rush times work at a few very popular fast food places and been involved in deep dives of their process and how to improve them.

A few key points:

• If pricing is held constant, you have to increase customer flow
• Increasing customer flow has a couple of dials to turn: ordering process and food prep
• While making changes to ordering process certainly help, changes are made to food prep that tend to lead toward having food already prepared and waiting or making food that can be re-heated quickly

My takeaway is that keeping prices constant during rush times partially leads to lower quality food with preservatives.

If Wendy’s is successful with surge pricing, maybe they don’t feel the need to cheapen the food and the market starts demanding higher quality food