We’ve all been there. It’s 8 pm on a Saturday and it’s cold AF out, so you call an Uber to get you to drinks/dinner/whatever you’ve got going on, only to discover that surge pricing means that you can only afford to drink tap water and eat the free bread that comes with the meal. Ugh.
Well, speaking of food, restaurants are taking a page out of Uber/Satan’s playbook and have begun experimenting with surge pricing of their own–offering discounts at low-traffic hours and charging you more for dining at peak times. As the Chicago Tribune reported, a London eatery called Bob Bob Ricard has laid out a menu with off-peak and mid-peak pricing. What is this, the LIRR? Granted, the discounts at Bob Bob Ricard (great name, by the way) are pretty tempting at 15 to 25 percent. But what if you just want to go out for a night on the town on a Saturday like anyone else?
This pricing model is nothing new, and airlines and hotels have been pulling these kind of shenanigans way before Uber got into the game. Also, ask your Grandpa about “early bird specials,” which is a very similar approach–offering discounts to early diners–with a much less sexy name. So are Mondays the new Saturdays? I hate to think what that would mean for getting through work on a Tuesday morning. If the way people book their flights and hotel rooms is any indication, nah. It would appear that money considerations aside, people do what they want to do whenever TF they want to do it.
