The Week of March 1 2024 | Wendy’s Will Test New Menus That Will Change Prices Throughout the Day

What's up, guys? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. It's Friday, March 1, 2024. We're weekly business and marketing news. We're taking the BS out of business, baby. What's up, Chris Hansen? Well, tell me my man. How are you today? I'm just ready to drop the BS out of everything. I don't want the more BS in life in the BS. We don't want that. Get it out of here. Yes. It's everything is fantastic. Gear it up for spring. We're ready. February. We get new month. Yeah. Ready for February to be gone. Ready for March. Turn the quarter. February's, we get four seasons in one month in February. It's South Carolina. You'll get an 80 degree day, 65 degree day, a 40 degree day, and a 20 degree day. It's like all over the map. I pull it weather. It's all good. How are you doing? The vacay lounge there in Miami. We are sunny and beautiful. This is my favorite time of year in Miami. Yeah. Yeah. Must be nice. Oh, sunny. Come on down. Oh, you got a place. Oh, you got a place for you down here in the lounge, brother. Oh, yeah. I want to cuddle up with storm. Yeah, man. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. How's the been a good week? Great week. Love that it's Friday. Love that we're going to March. Some spring. My birthday coming up ready for it. Yeah. I've been thinking about some of the content for our show will be changing to write about now. We're going to do some segments. And I don't mind sharing transparency here on the show. Something that crossed my mind. We were talking about earlier. Because it's been a good week for crypto. So I was thinking like stuff that's rolled up with business and stuff. Just playing around. I was like, Tails from the crypt. You're probably you have to be too young for that. I don't know who the trademark. That might be a segment. I'm close. Yes. It was. Yeah. If there's not a trademark on that, I think we might have to have a five to 10 minute segment. That's like Tails from the crypt and we'll have a crypto specialist on. Yeah. So it's been a good week for the old Bitcoin. Bitcoin breaking 60,000. It's been the crypto bros are out and loud screaming from the rooftops. I told you so we'd come back. We come back. What do they think? What do they think? Channeling all that. They say what was making it take the rise again from my conversations. Because I'm no specialist, but it was that now with JP Morgan and these big institutions offering Bitcoin and the ETFs and that being approved for C now, you're going to have people going to see their financial advisor and okay, we'll put five to 10% of your holdings in crypto. If someone like my parents where it wasn't easily accessible to the general population prior to now, perhaps for your not tech savvy people. Yeah, because I own some and have the absence of it. It's not easy. Like I'm trying to get even like some of my friends, my A's that are somewhat on the digital age. They just never figure it out. Like you sign up for this app, you got to link this account. Dude, this is 17, the gymnastics of digital. And all of that with usually people that don't fully understand the value of it. Yeah. So like my parents, but I think that's part of it. But if you look at the history of cycles every three to four years, again, I'm no specialist. But I think it's going to, this will be a good year. Yeah. I'm excited for it. Overall, though, and I look, we're going to replay this. I always say we're going to do this and I never do it. But I need to go do it because I've been right. I was right about freaking the whole metaverse. I said, that was a whole bullshit scam. It's a game. So I think it's going to matter way before it. Every thought was going to be a big deal. It's like freaking out every coming over the metaverse. Like if you want to be smart, you won't do anything. I said this exact time last year that the negative news with the economy, taking a shit was fake news and not going to happen and it didn't. And I'm not saying it's, look, we got propped up by all the money that hit the market from COVID and all that stuff. But the reality is, even with that gone, the economy is still rocking. And so everybody said, oh, recession. And I said, nope, not happening. There's too many other like things out there. And I'm not the biggest of economy like metrics. So I could just tell there was enough energy and running multiple businesses and knowing and being on the ground floor of kind of the sentiment of small business. I didn't think it was going to happen. And sure enough, here we are. No, all recession fears put it to rest. So, you know, a lot of waving of and, but if you want to go follow the gurus, like Gary Vee, you go see all his posts from last year and others, they go, oh, be ready. Udb prepared. It's come to me before it's going to be so bad. No, sorry. Didn't happen somehow. We always survive and we keep trucking. Yeah, we're all still here. So anyway, we have some articles, some news today or good friends at CNN today. Great friends of ours. Yeah, Wendy's will be testing new menus that change prices throughout the day. Wow, I think this is really interesting. The price of a Wendy's frosty could soon fluctuate throughout the day as the chain looks to introduce Uber surge pricing on its menu. The practice known as dynamic pricing will begin testing in 2025. Wendy's recently revealed in an earnings call. It's part of a $20 million investment, new digital menu boards and its U.S. restaurants that will enable them to change prices, depending on demand. Interesting. Mark it for your damn frosty. No, hey, we got to get there before 10 a.m. They always raise a 20 cents. All right, I'm going live right now on Instagram. Right now frosties are 20 cents. It'd be cool because you could you can create viral moments because they could play around with like going hyper low. But it all seems like it's crazy. The amount of opportunity that becomes when you have dynamic ability to change those things. When I'm sure you can add a lot to your bottom line. You have five cents here. I'm interested to see how big of the volatility of the prices. Are we talking a $1 bump, $3 bump? Does this mean this is what I think of driving by the McDonald's or Wendy's late night, right? Especially when I live near college campuses. The drive-throughs are packed on a Friday Saturday night. Demand to the roof. Are you going to be paying 5, 10 bucks for a frosty? Because there's a doubt there's going to be that many people. So I don't think they're going to jack it up to $10 or anything. There's probably a pressure point there that's too much. But I do think you'll see the small variations. And then they'll do these little social things. You'll have people like you'll have people going through the line going. Right now it's the cheeseburger's only $0.68 or what. Yeah, it's brilliant. It makes sense. If someone right now is like, hey, $1 burger and frosty, Wendy's that'd be like that's. Yeah, touch my interest. And they could do those kind of things. Like there's a million things they can do. Play around with. Five burgers, five dollars. Like they're used to be like. See, it's like a game kind of little gambling almost. Yeah, exactly. I like it, Wendy's. We'll see. You're going to see a lot of people do it in this, I think. You have the connectivity availability with Wi-Fi networks and or cell phone networks. You have these digital boards. I think you're going to see this sort of dynamic content in a lot of places. And it was always the promise in like outdoor boards. Like we're always going to do this and they do it to a degree like with the digital boards. But I could see a lot of other things as that connectivity and digital signage because more and more. You'll see this kind of dynamic content coming. So sounds like fun. I think you'll see all the carriers or fast food places probably doing this or anywhere that has a dynamic and volume the way that fast food does. This comes to us from our friends at flyersonline.com. That's flyers-on-line. We do have some dashes in there. So just dash right on over there to flyers-on-line.com. Most valued e-commerce direct to consumer unicorns in the United States as of December 2023. A recent study on e-commerce and direct to consumer startups by flyersonline.com adding the dashes. Uncovered that fanatics is leading the pack at a staggering $3.1 billion valuation followed by closely by gopuff, fare, and thresio. It's evident that innovation knows no boundaries in this dynamic industries. The top five fanatics. And that's $31 billion. Holy shit. I thought it was $3.1. $31 billion. Fanatics, the cap, hats, and jerseys and all that shit. Crazy. It's the most valuable e-commerce startup. License. I wonder how much sports and nice serving fans around the globe. T-Swifts and Kelsey probably drove that valuation up a little bit this year. Yeah, probably. Good for that. Gopuff stands out for rapid delivery model in the grocery sector. So $15 billion for gopuff. Fair $12.59 billion. It's a wholesale marketplace connected retailers with thousands of small brands and artists and producers. Thresio. Innovative approach to acquiring a scaling Amazon businesses has earned its valuation of $10 billion. And skims rounds out the top five. $5 billion valuation with powerhouse in the body, inclusive shapewear and apparel market. So all these are direct to consumer brands in the billions. The top five, according to research from flyers-on-line.com. It makes you want to go in the direct to consumer market. But at the same time, we've lived there. We live there a few different things. It's not easy. It's a combination of things and right product, right place, right marketing. It's branding. It's a combination of affiliates and it's a ton of things. And even some of like fanatics is the world's change, right? I look at them like lids of the mall. Or those type of stores where people don't go to malls anymore. I think right time, right place, ahead of the curve, even gopuff. They were just niche. It was Uber Eats, but for really like weed smokers was what they were targeting. Yeah. So I guess that shows the power of the niche too. Even schemes. It's a niche what for like kind of body-chaping wear for women. Exactly. Understanding. Yeah. What was the brand in like the 90s that did that? Spanx. Yeah, Spanx. They're still around. There's still a billion dollar brand too. And I'm going to be interesting because all of these, the bigger brands are doing D to C now. Nike and others that have, they're both sold in stores, have third party grease sellers have all kinds of layers. Versus the D to C and because the ad costs got so high and the targeting has gotten worse because of privacy and other things with Facebook and others still make good decent ROI. But this is not what it was five or 10 years ago where you could run Facebook ads and get 20 X your ads spend on sales. Those days are over. You can get three to four X your ads spend. That's considered above average. And so the D to C model requires a lot of, it just used to be, okay, throw up a store. You have a good product. You run some Facebook, Instagram, Google Pay per click. Hey, you rock and rollin. But now it's not quite that easy and you don't make the profit level. So you've got to do all the other stuff. Influencers, affiliates, branding and you got to play the game. There's no, no more short cutting what it was. So there's just, you have to play so many levels now. And so the problem or the opportunity, it's still an opportunity, but it's like the challenge crisis things like, okay, if it's you and a buddy starting up a company and you both have a couple of different skill sets, you used to could just start it up, get it running and okay, run some ads, maybe pay one person and start moving this thing. But now you have to be good at like 20 things and or hire people that are 20 things. So I think it's just you're going to see fewer of the overnight successes in D to C. And but you'll still see the ones that are highly organized that might take on some cash or do something with investors. I think they've got the right product and stuff. But it's not the easy climb that used to be. But fanatics is ahead of the game. 31 big ones, 31 billion. And if you want to learn from me directly, join my newsletter. Ryanoffer.com, backslash newsletter, sign up. I give daily advice on marketing, personal, branding, podcasting, life. Give that a shout, join that. It's free. Staley, just like this show, give away our best advice. Oh, this is interesting. As an energy drink connoisseur, rockstar energy pushes scientific claim with campaign and brand refresh. Comes with us from marketing dive.com. Rockstar energy drink, launch the campaign. You can own any moment that is backed by a new science-based claim about the brand's ability to deliver sustained energy per a new press release. The brand tested its proprietary formulas to measure caffeine metabolism and evaluate physical and mental energy levels over a 12-hour period, finding that it's formulas with at least 160 milligram of caffeine delivered steady energy for up to five hours. Hey, that sounds familiar. Five-hour energy, baby. They were careful not to say it that way. That's the magic number right there, apparently. It must be. So, you're going to say new. Are you a rockstar guy? I'm an equal opportunity energy drink person. So, depending on the... Which I kind of love that, you have a different one literally every day in your hands. So, I'll go in to a store, I mean, a store gas station, whatever it might be. And I give a glance over, because always new flavors, different things going on. I'm scanning, looking for it, and I'll occasionally hit rockstar, because the places I go head doesn't have the most flavors. I'll have two or three, a couple of them I don't really care about. There's a couple flavors I like of theirs. And think about the new flavor with this campaign. I'll give... Look, I'm equal opportunity here, democratizing energy drink choices. You can own any moment is the campaign. It's... I like that better than... You got this. Adidas. Adidas is new. You got this. Yeah, Adidas is... You can own any moment. It's okay, I like it better. Yeah. Even the science-backed claim, I don't see anyone else doing that, and then a drink space. They might need to put in parentheses. You can own any moment for five hours. Yes, that would be better. You have five hours. Don't any moment. So, we'll see. I don't know if people are going to buy it for the... I don't know. Like the proprietary, all that stuff. We should do a king convinced we have to have a test with it. I'll do a story if I could find one, and if it has... Maybe it's their existing drink, so do this. I don't know if it's a new formula, or whatever, but I'll be on the lookout for it, and I'll do a little test in the morning and a little post-story, but all right, I'm trying to see if the five hours can also have energy. Thank you. It's a very special with your tolerance. I'd love to see you. Yeah. It's four or five minutes. You're not a normal test variable, brother. No. I can probably drink. I think I might could pass the test of... It could drink like five energy drinks and still fall asleep. No, in an hour. And, but I don't do that regularly, but I could drink five, and I think I could fall asleep faster than anyone on Earth. I think I'd still get to sleep within 30 minutes to an hour after the five. I think I could totally shut it down. Yeah, I'm a coffee, but... Yeah, coffee, but give me a break. I'm talking about, I think you get... I could juice up 700, 800 milligrams, caffeine, and still sleepy time in an hour. If I lay down, it got comfortable. The offers... We can't lay down like, I don't stop much. Like, I don't sit down. I'm not a napper, but the offers have the ability to get on the couch. If I get comfortable and stable, I can fall asleep just about anywhere. Like, I can kind of catch my wife who'll make fun of me. And even my old friends, like at college, I would catch, because you sleep deprived. You're a college. You're partying. You're going to classes. You're doing all this shit. I was always known as the cat napper. Like, I would catch five, ten power naps, like all the time. In juicer, and I was also always the one that could stay up the latest. So I was a partier, and I never got... I could pull it on nighter and be good the next day. I think it's because I could find my like, five or ten minute moments. The secrets to success, y'all. Yeah, exactly. But my sister's dad and ex-ex-ex-a-wake, if neither... The offers don't stop moving much. They're not lazy folk. Like, we move. I'm just keep going and all that. But when we do stop, like, it's funny, like, in our house, we used to watch... We'd watch a movie or something, and you look around and everybody's because, let's get stable. I don't know. Fun facts here on the Radcast. Next up, for the Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com. Apple has officially talked about this few weeks ago that they were changing plans. Apple's officially ended its quest to build its own electric vehicle. Apple has ended its secret plans. Not so secret. Plans of building a self-driving electric car. A decade-long effort that was seen as one of the most ambitious undertakings in the company's history. Apple will ex-execise on Tuesday informed teams working on the vehicle called Project Titan, internally, that hundreds of employees who worked on the car will be shifted to divisions working on artificial intelligence according to multiple reports. So, the unnamed, unplanned secret. Apple cars are going to remain secret by not launching it all. This doesn't surprise me. I think it was ambitious. It's funny how they choose to release certain things or let certain secrets out that may or may not be secret. But this is when it blows up in your face because you do it for PR reasons because you want the buzz out there. You want the cache A and all that. It's going to happen. But then when it doesn't, it looks like a failure. So, sometimes it's good for business to leak these things and who the hell knows that they leaked it. They're so fucking big. It's like, the employees are probably going to talk about it. But nonetheless, for all you people who are waiting on the Apple car doesn't like it's going to happen. So, instead, they're going to focus on AI. That's all we need. More AI. Maybe another GPT. An Apple GPT is what we need. On other news, coming to go also from our friends at marketing dive, Gatorade is expanding his presence in hydration with Gatorade water. You start with the flavor. Gatorade launched Gatorade water. The brand's first unflavored water and will support the introduction with a digital first campaign titled Always in Motion. Perpetuals provided by the brand Activations to get people moving are planned in New York, LA, Miami, and Chicago. All the big cities get all the love. The new product from the PepsiCo division comes as sales of hydration products are booming. Consumers look for ways to adapt more wellness habits. This will be interesting because obviously, if anybody's going to launch water or something's going to hydrate Gatorade's right there, I think they'll be successful. You got brand cache A brand name. I do think it's a little bit interesting because you just think of flavor in your Gatorade so you're going to downgrade potentially in your mind just to water. Yeah, so to be interesting how they state the claims for what makes their water better. So obviously, there's no aid in the water aid. Hey, there you go. You could call it that. The nonetheless, it is popular. A lot of people are selling water. We talked about liquid death last week. So it obviously is an obvious brand extension and always in motion. So we'll see. That sounds like a campaign for everything that people do because you think of a few active no matter what. So we'll see. I do the potential to be interesting how the position it and what makes their water better. What is the aid in the water? So Gatorade expanding. Thank you marketing dive. We appreciate all of their articles. They bring a lot of great marketing news every week to our listeners marketing dive.com. Also want to give a shout out to our sponsor Mack Fox macfox.com you're going to be seeing some content on my feed and the radcast to new ultimate performance bike. E-bike. It's got fat tires. Goes up to 28 miles per hour. I've got the X2. It looks like a mountain bike slash scooter. I wrote it actually this weekend with the kids. We went down to the park. We live really close to downtown here in Greenville. A lot of bike riding, a lot of easy access to trails and things like that. And you've probably may have used one of these before. I don't know they become fairly prevalent but it's great because you've got the option of peddling or adding a little gas if you're going up a huge hill. I peddled most of the way but admittedly I hadn't slept that great the night before. I was just feeling a little drenched on the ride back. They hit just a large hills of kids riding. I'm like turned to gas on baby. It's really easy. It's got long range. I'll say this. I used it a few times on some big hills and we rode probably for I don't know five to seven miles total. And that battery lasted. It didn't even come off the full mark. So the battery is incredible. Got a really comfortable seat. That's a big thing for a big guy like me and look I'm 65 260. Big dude. This X2's comfortable. Long range. You got the option. It almost looks like scooter this thing around town. The great if you live in a I don't know tight geographic area or something like this. Perfect little city cruiser. But we really appreciate Mac Fox new sponsor of the Radcast and look. $100 off with Ryan offered 100 or Ryan offered 150 on the X2. So you get $150 off the X2 or $100 off the X1. Use Ryan offered 100 for the X1. Ryan offered 150 for the X2. Go check out our friends. Mac Fox MacyFoX.com to learn more. Tell them I sent you. Go give them some level social media as well. You'll see some posts of different stories on mine and the Radcast feed and we appreciate them. That's really all we've got today folks appreciate everyone for listening making us number one. Find us at theradcast.com find me at social media at Ryan offered. If I Chris Brobey Hansen give him some love. If you technical difficulties with Chris's feed but you know what show business has got to go on and we appreciate you. We'll see you next time on the Radcast.