Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - The Week of March 1 2024 | Wendy’s Will Test New Menus That Will Change Prices Throughout the Day

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Welcome to the Radcast, your weekly source for the latest insights and discussions on marketing and business news. In this episode, Ryan Alford and Chris Hansen discuss various topics including cryptocurrency, dynamic pricing at Wendy's, top-valued e-commerce startups, the economy, Rockstar Energy Drink's scientific claim, Apple's abandoned electric vehicle project, and Gatorade's unflavored water.Takeaways Cryptocurrency continues to gain popularity, with Bitcoin breaking $60,000 and big institutions offering Bitcoin and ETFs. Wendy's plans to introduce dynamic pricing on its menu, allowing prices to fluctuate throughout the day based on demand. Fanatics is the most valuable e-commerce startup, followed by GoPuff, Fair, Thrasio, and Skims. The hosts discuss their predictions about the economy and how it has defied recession fears. Rockstar Energy Drink launches a campaign and claims to deliver sustained energy for up to five hours. Apple has officially ended its plans to build a self-driving electric car. Gatorade expands its product line with Gatorade water, its first unflavored water product. Introduction02:06Crypto and Tails from the Crypt05:23Wendy's Dynamic Pricing09:16Top Valued E-commerce Startups14:27Predicting the Economy15:24Rockstar Energy Drink's Scientific Claim21:38Gatorade's Unflavored Water23:31 If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. What's up guys? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. It's Friday, March 1st, 2024. Our weekly business and marketing news, we're taking the BS out of business, baby. What's up, Chris Hansen?

What's up? my man, how are you today? I'm just ready to drop the BS out of everything. I love. More BS in life. The BS. We don't want that. Get it out of here.

Yes. Everything is fantastic. Gear it up for spring. We're ready. February, we get. New months. Yeah. Ready for February to be gone.

Ready for March. Turn the quarter. February is, we get four seasons in one month in February in South Carolina. Like, 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. That's the bipolar weather. It's all good.

How are you doing the vacate 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 man. Come on down.

Always got a place for you down here in the lounge, brother. Oh, yeah. I want to cuddle up with Storm. Yeah, man. 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. So I'm ready for it. Yeah. I've been thinking about some of the content for our show. We'll be changing to write about now. We're going to do it 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 relevant with business and stuff. I was playing around. I was like, Tales from the Crypt. You're probably, you might be too young for that.

I don't know if there's a 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, because it's been a good week for the old Bitcoin, hadn't it? Bitcoin breaking 60,000. It's been, uh, the crypto bros are out and loud screaming from the rooftops. I told you so.

We'd come back. We'd come back. What's, what do they think's, what do they think's channeling all that? They say? What's making it take the rise again? From my conversations, because I'm no specialist, but it was that now with J.P. 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, 10% of your holdings in crypto.

Someone like my parents, right? Yeah. They're, 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 I have, you know, the apps and stuff, but it's, it's not easy. Like, I'm trying to get, even like some of my friends, my age 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, do this.

It's 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, it cycles every three to four years. Again, I'm no specialist. But I think it's going to continue. This will be a good year.

Yeah. I'm excited for it. Overall, though. And I, look, we're going to go 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. Everybody thought it was going to be a big deal. It's like freaking out. Every company, what are you going to do with the metaverse? I'm 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 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's 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. I can just tell that there was enough energy and running multiple businesses and no way. 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. But if you want to go follow the gurus, like Gary V, you go see all his posts from last year and others. They go, oh, be ready. You need be prepared. It's kind of 2034 is 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, are good friends at CNN today. Great friends of ours.

Yes. 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. The stock market for your damn frosty. I know. Hey, shit, honey, we got to get there before 10 a.m. They always raise it 20 cents.

All right. I'm going live right now on Instagram. Right now, Frosties are 20 cents. It'd be cool because you can create viral moments because they could play around with like going hyper low. But it also like it's crazy. The amount of opportunity that becomes when you have dynamic ability to change those things. And 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-thrus are packed on a Friday, Saturday night. Demands to the roof. Are you going to be paying $5, $10 for a frosty? Because there's... I doubt there's going to be that level. So I don't think they're going to jack it up to $10 or anything. There's probably a pressure point there that It's too much. But I do think you'll see small variations, and then they'll do these little social things like,

Yuri. You'll have people like, you'll have people going through the line going right now. It's the cheeseburger's only 68 cents or whatever. It's brilliant. It makes sense. If someone right now is like, hey, $1 burger in Frosty at Wendy's, I'd be like, that's, catch my interests. And they could do those kind of things.

Like, there's a million things they can do, play around with. Five burgers, five dollars. There used to be like, it's like a game kind of, a little gambling almost. Yeah, exactly. I like it, Wendy's. We'll see, you're going to see a lot of people doing 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 it 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 dash on dash line. You do have some dashes in there. So just dash right on over there to Flyers dash on dash 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, Fair, and Thrasio. 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. I wonder how much sports purchase and ice every fans around the globe. T. Switz and Kelsey probably drove that valuation up a little bit this year. Yeah, probably. Good for that. GoPuff stands out for each 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 artisan producers. Thrasio, innovative approach to acquiring a scaling Amazon businesses, has earned its valuation of $10 billion. And skims rounds out the top five, $5 billion dollar valuation, powerhouse in the B. body inclusive shapeware and apparel market. So all these are direct-to-consumer brands in the billions, the top five, according to research, from flyers-on-dash-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 on 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 something like fanatics is the world's change, right? I look at them like lids.

Yep. 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. Yeah. 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 skims. It's a niche, what, for like kind of body shaping 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 it's going to be interesting because all of these, the bigger brands are doing DTC now, Nike and others that have, they're both sold in stores, have third-party resellers, 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. You still make good, decent ROI, but this is not what it was five or ten years ago where you could run Facebook ads and get 20X your ad spend on sales. Those days are over. You can get three to four X your ad 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 rolling. 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 more shortcutting 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 Chris is 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 D2C. But you'll still see the ones that are highly organized that might take on some cash or do something with investors. They've got the right product and stuff.

But it's not the easy climb that it 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. Ryanofford.com backslash newsletter. Sign up. I give daily advice on marketing, personal branding, podcasting, life.

Give that a shout. Join that. It's free. It's daily, just like this show, give away our best advice. I thought this is interesting. As an energy drink connoisseur, rock star energy pushes scientific claim with campaign and brand refresh. Comes with us from MarketingDive.com.

Rockstar Energy Drink launched a 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 its formulas with at least 100, 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 rock star 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, convenience store, gas station, whatever it might be. And I'll give a glance over because there's always new flavors or different things going on. I'm scanning, looking for it, and I'll occasionally hit Rockstar. But the places I go, it doesn't have the most flavors. They'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 look about the new flavor with this campaign, I'll give, look, a meekw opportunity here, democratizing energy drink choices. You can own any moment is the campaign. I like that better than, you got this. Adidas. Adidas's new book. Yeah.

You got this. Yeah. You can own any moment. It's okay. I like it better. Yeah. Even the science back to claim, I don't see you know all's doing that in an energy drink space.

They might need to put in parentheses. You can own any moment. For five hours. Yes. Yeah, that would be good. You have five hours to own any moment. So we'll see. I don't know if people are going to buy it for the plane or not,

like the proprietary, all that stuff. We should do it. We can't convince me. We'll do a test with it. I'll do like a story. If I could find one and if it has, maybe it's their existing drinks will 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 I'll post a story. But all right, I'm trying to sleep in five hours and I'll still have energy. Yeah. Especially with your tolerance, I'd love to see it. Yeah. It's for five minutes. You're not a normal test variable, brother.

No. I can probably drink. I think I might could pass the test of like three energy drinks and still fall asleep. No, in an hour. And, but. 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. I could have a coffee, but... Yeah, coffee, but give you a break. I'm talking about I think I could juice up 700, 800 milligrams caffeine and still sleepy time in an hour. If I lay down and got comfortable. The offers, we get laid 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 got to catch me. My wife will make fun of me. And even my old friends, like in college, I would catch, because you sleep deprived. You're in college. You're partying.

You're going to classes. You're doing a lot of shit. I was always known as the catnapper. Like, I would catch 5-10 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 could never got, I could pull it all-nighter and be good the next day. I think it's because I could find my like five or 10-minute moments. The secrets to success, y'all.

Yeah, exactly. But my sister and dad are the exact same way. The offers don't stop moving much. They're not, we're not lazy folk. Like, we move and 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 once you 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 executives 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 Car is going to remain secret by, i.e., 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 cachet 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 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 that are waiting on the Apple car, it 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 up also from our friends at Marketing Dive, Gatorade is expanding its presence in hydration with Gatorade water.

You start with the flavor. Gatorade launched Gatorade water. The brand's first, unfavored water. and will support the introduction with a digital first campaign titled Always in Motion. Peritur was provided by the brand. Activations to get people moving are planned in New York, L.A., Miami, and Chicago. All the big cities get all the love. The new product from the Pempsico 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 that's going to hydrate you, Gatorade's right there. I think they'll be successful. You got brand cash 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 water.

So it'll be interesting how they state the claims for what makes their water better. So obviously, there's no aid in water aid. Hey, there you go. Could have caught it that. 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 it. People are active no matter what. So we'll see. I do the potential. It would be interesting how to position it and what makes their water better. what is the aid in the water. So Gatorade expanding.

Thank you, MarketingDive. We appreciate all of their articles. They bring a lot of great marketing news every week to our listeners, MarketingDive.com. Also want to give a shout out to our sponsor, MacFox.com. You're going to be seeing some content on my feed and the Radcast. It's a new ultimate performance bike. e-bike. It's got fat tires. It 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 probably may have used one of these before. I don't know. They've 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 drains on the ride back. They hit just some large hills. The kids are riding.

I'm like, turn the 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's incredible. Got a really comfortable seat. That's a big thing for a big guy like me. And look, I'm 6.5-260. Big dude. This X-2's comfortable, long range. You got the option. You almost like scooter this thing around town.

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 a sponsor of the Radcast, and look, get $100 off with Ryan Alford 100 or Ryan offered 150 on the X-2. So you get $150 off the X-2 or $100 off the X-1. Use Ryan offered 100 for the X-1, Ryan offered 150 for the X-2. Go check out our friends. MacFox, M-A-C-F-O-X-com to learn more. Tell them, I sent you. Go give them some love on social media. as well. You'll see some posts of different stories

of 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 the radcast.com. You find me at social media at Ryan Alford.

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