Diners don’t like overcrowded restaurants or long waiting lists, but there’s one approach to the problem they like even less: surge pricing. Also known as dynamic pricing, it attempts to ease the biggest rushes by either raising prices at the busiest times, lowering prices at the slowest times, or both.

While the latter, aka early bird specials, are having a moment, the prospect of charging more at busy times tends to trigger consumers. After Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner announced during a February earnings call that the chain would “begin testing…dynamic pricing” in 2025, the chain faced backlash and said it would not be charging more at busy times and that Tanner’s announcement had been “misconstrued.”

When a chain of pubs in the UK announced in 2023 it would charge more for pints during busier hours, we polled Retail Brew readers on whether they thought that was a good strategy; nearly 3 out of 4 (73.9%) said no, it was not.

But why use a stick when you buy carrots in bulk? So goes the thinking at Snooze Eatery, a chain of breakfast and brunch restaurants with 71 locations in the US.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Amazon is quickly becoming the go-to place to shop for everyday essentials.

The tech giant said on Thursday that it has seen a rise in sales of essential items in the health, beauty, personal care, and nonperishable grocery categories, thanks to its speedy delivery.

“While these items often have a lower average selling price, the strength in everyday essential’s revenue is a positive indicator that customers are turning to us for more of their daily needs,” Amazon SVP and CFO Brian Olsavsky said on the company’s earnings call.

“We see that when customers purchase these types of items from us, they build bigger baskets, shop more frequently, and spend more on Amazon,” he added.

Keep reading here.—VC

It’s not every day you get sued by two of the biggest companies in the world, but on October 28, that’s exactly what happened to Bigboostup.com, a website that sells allegedly fake reviews, which was named as a defendant in separate suits by Amazon and Google.

The suits were filed by Amazon in the Western District of Washington and Google in the Northern District of California. They allege that “the website sold fake product reviews to bad actors to publish on their product listing pages in Amazon’s store and fake reviews of business listings on Google Search and Google Maps,” according to a post by Amazon.

Bigboostup.com was down at the time publication, but an archived version of its homepage from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine offered a plethora of options to buy bulk reviews for not only Amazon and Google but also others, including Yelp and Tripadvisor. Also for sale: TikTok followers. Prices ranged from as low as $8 to as high as $2,680.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Believe it or not, 2024’s almost in the rearview. As such, Placer.ai joins us to uncover the latest location analytics to examine retail visit performance ahead of the 2024 holiday season. Save your virtual seat to learn more. Register now.