Restaurant pricing by place, time or person

Restaurant prices can change with local conditions, an offer’s timing or customer data. The difference lies in the trigger, the audience and who chooses.

A restaurant’s location or time of day#

McDonald’s described its approach in an October 1, 2026 statement. Its pricing tool supplies restaurant-specific recommendations based on local market conditions. Franchisees independently choose prices and can decline those recommendations, the company said.

A restaurant at a transportation hub can face different conditions from one in a suburb or small town, McDonald’s explained. The unit of the recommendation is the restaurant. The company said its tool neither sets prices for individual customers based on their willingness to pay nor changes prices in real time or at different hours. A recommendation can therefore be specific to one restaurant without being specific to one customer.

Wendy’s addressed time and display flexibility in its February 27, 2024 statement. It said digital menu boards being added to U.S. company-operated restaurants would make it easier to change featured items. It described possible future changes to menu offerings through the day and easier discounts, especially during slower periods.

The company said it had no plan to raise prices when restaurants were busiest. Its explanation concerned which items or offers a screen could present and when. Changing a featured item can change what a customer sees without changing that item’s price.

A channel and an operator’s choice#

Restaurant software vendor Juicer describes another process on its website, reviewed October 6, 2026. It says it connects sales, costs and competitor information to recommendations while leaving the decision with the operator.

Its illustrative screens organize sales and commissions by ordering channel, such as direct orders and delivery marketplaces. A separate queue shows proposed item prices for a restaurant. Suggested promotions can apply to a direct-order channel or multiple channels. Those displays describe where an offer applies, alongside what might change on the menu.

Juicer says each recommendation includes a dollar estimate and confidence level. In its demonstration, choosing a proposed item price and choosing where to offer a promotion are separate decisions.

When the customer becomes the input#

The Federal Trade Commission staff’s January 2025 research summaries describe tools spanning store-level pricing and individual targeting. Staff described possible uses of browsing and transaction histories to decide who receives a promotion, including withholding a discount from someone predicted to buy anyway. A customer profile can therefore affect eligibility for an offer, as well as the price itself.

These were initial staff findings about intermediaries’ tools, not findings of illegal conduct or identified restaurant deployments.

Staff also described tools that rearrange search results using consumer segments or behavior. Showing a person different products is a different output from changing the price of the same product. Price-setting tools could make recommendations monthly or minute by minute: frequency alone does not identify whom they target.

The FTC’s proposed disclosure position#

In an August 19, 2026 proposed policy statement, the FTC distinguished changes in market supply and demand from prices based on personal data. Where consumers reasonably expect non-personalized prices, its proposed position calls for clear disclosures of personalization, its basis and the data types used. It says missing disclosures would likely be unfair or deceptive under Section 5.

The document remained labeled proposed on the FTC’s page reviewed October 6. It is not a blanket prohibition or final regulation and says it would not bind the FTC or the public.

Its hypothetical food-delivery example involves charging someone more because personal data suggest they cannot, or are unlikely to, leave home to buy food. Here, the price follows an inference about that customer, rather than a change in demand across a market.