Wendy's Plans to Raise Menu Prices During Busy Periods

Ordering your next Biggie Bag or Frosty may put a bigger dent in your wallet. Wendy's, home of fresh, never frozen beef patties and awesome deals like Fry-day, is preparing to rollout an "Uber-style" surge-pricing model sometime in 2025, meaning the cost of menu items will rise and fluctuate in price depending on the time, location, and demand.

Kirk Tanner, the new CEO and president of Wendy's, announced the planned changes to the chain's menu pricing in mid-February, saying during a call with investors that the Ohio-based company will invest $20 million on digital menu boards. The menu boards, which will roll out "to all U.S. company-operated restaurants by the end of 2025," will be able to display dynamic pricing that fluctuates throughout the day. Tanner also said, per Food and Wine, that Wendy's will invest an additional $10 million over two years to enhance its global system, help upsell other menu items, and improve order accuracy.

"As we continue to show the benefit of this technology in our company-operated restaurants, franchisee interest in digital menu boards should increase further supporting sales and profit growth across the system," he told investors, according to the New York Post, adding, "Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and daypart offerings along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling."

A Wendy's spokesperson added in a statement to TODAY: "At Wendy's, we're focused on providing great tasting, fresh, high-quality food and doing it in a way that brings value to our customers. As we've previously shared, we are making a significant investment to accelerate our digital business. In addition to evolving our loyalty program, we are leveraging technology even more with the roll out of digital menu boards in some U.S. restaurants. Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing a variety of enhanced features on these digital menu boards like dynamic pricing, different offerings in certain parts of the day, AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling based on factors such as weather."

At this time, it is unclear how much prices could fluctuate throughout the day. The Wendy's spokesperson noted that "dynamic pricing can allow Wendy's to be competitive and flexible with pricing, motivate customers to visit and provide them with the food they love at a great value. We will test a number of features that we think will provide an enhanced customer and crew experience."