The Subway near me is often very quiet, but at particular times, predictably every week, they're absolutely slammed. If they jacked all their prices by $1, then offered "off-hours discounts" of even $2, they'd probably see the same average price per sandwich, but shift customer demand to keep the restaurant more steady. They might even attract new customers who don't come during rush times because they're time sensitive, not price sensitive.

In other words, this could be a win-win-win for everybody:

Subway sees higher total revenue
Price-sensitive customers can shift their orders to lull hours and save a bit of money
Time-sensitive customers have lower wait times during lunch/dinner rush.

Subway (and Wendy's, for that matter) already do this a bit with their coupons; I rarely go to Subway without coupons since I'm price sensitive. Switching from coupons to scheduled price fluctuations isn't really a big change, and keeps people paying less with coupons from gumming up the dinner rush.

I think this could be good.

[–] esaru@beehaw.org 2 points 8 months ago

How about the customers that are both time- and price sensitive?

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