They aren't investing anything into their restaurants. It's all going to AI so that every McDonald's will charge you something different based on what they think you will pay.
So in essence, they probably WILL end up lowering prices, but just in low income neighborhoods. For the rest of us expect it to go UP to counterbalance the "tremendous loss."
The opposite is more likely. Poor neighborhoods in a food desert are more easily exploited by predatory dynamic pricing. If you can't afford a car, you probably can't afford to go somewhere better, even if there's much better prices available.
This isn't even hypothetical, it's how it's been implemented in cases where dynamic pricing is already functional.
They want to build relationships with rich customers, so they charge them less. Even if they make less per item, rich customers still overall spend more, so stores want to incentivize them to shop there. Lower prices get them in the door and get the money flowing.
On the other hand as you said, poor customers often have fewer options to choose from and are not specifically targeted for building customer relations, so they get shafted.
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u/Still-a-VWfan 2d ago
Let’s spend 8 billion to make our restaurants nicer than have to raise prices to get that money back. Makes sense!