What I mostly don’t understand about the weekend surcharges is why businesses think it makes good sense to frame it that way instead of offering weekday discounts. People hate paying surcharges but love discounts.
I’m no expert but I think there are reasonably strict laws around pricing advertising, especially for dining. If there weren’t, despite looking ridiculous on a menu, just about every business would be like “hey buy my bagel! It was $25 now it’s only $12.50”. It’s misleading advertising.
It woudn’t be misleading though. It’s only misleading if they are advertising it as normally $25 when it is never actually sold at that. It’s quite common to have things like special lunch deals and there is nothing about having different prices for different times.
What does seem to be changing lately is that businesses are upset that they have to pay staff more on weekends, and they want to use the approach of putting on surcharges because they know it upsets people. They want people thinking about their hip pocket and how they don’t want to pay more for their weekend bagel so that they will support moves to cut the wages of their workers.
I feel like it makes sense to not be able to call it a weekday discount, because then it would be on discount more often than not, which seems like something that wouldn’t be allowed
What I mostly don’t understand about the weekend surcharges is why businesses think it makes good sense to frame it that way instead of offering weekday discounts. People hate paying surcharges but love discounts.
I’m no expert but I think there are reasonably strict laws around pricing advertising, especially for dining. If there weren’t, despite looking ridiculous on a menu, just about every business would be like “hey buy my bagel! It was $25 now it’s only $12.50”. It’s misleading advertising.
It woudn’t be misleading though. It’s only misleading if they are advertising it as normally $25 when it is never actually sold at that. It’s quite common to have things like special lunch deals and there is nothing about having different prices for different times.
What does seem to be changing lately is that businesses are upset that they have to pay staff more on weekends, and they want to use the approach of putting on surcharges because they know it upsets people. They want people thinking about their hip pocket and how they don’t want to pay more for their weekend bagel so that they will support moves to cut the wages of their workers.
I feel like it makes sense to not be able to call it a weekday discount, because then it would be on discount more often than not, which seems like something that wouldn’t be allowed