Customer claims Wendy’s secretly downsized cups following “surge pricing” fail

A Wendy’s customer has claimed the restaurant chain secretly changed cup sizes following its failed “surge pricing” plan.

On February 26, Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner announced the fast food restaurant chain would be implementing a “surge pricing” system where the cost of food fluctuated depending on demand.

The news did not go over well with customers and Wendy’s quickly found itself on the receiving end of mass backlash. On the defensive, Wendy’s claimed that “surge pricing” was never its intent but instead, the chain would use “dynamic pricing” starting in 2025.

This means that while price adjustments could be made, current prices would remain as the upper limit. However, one customer has taken to TikTok to suggest Wendy’s is saving costs elsewhere following the surge pricing fiasco — by downsizing its cups.

Red, who goes by ‘thabigreddawg‘ on TikTok, claimed on the social media platform that Wendy’s changed its cup sizes after the “surge pricing idea failed.”

“You know how they announced a little while back that they were gonna implement surge pricing, and then they immediately walked it back because people were like, ‘f*** that, we’re not doing that’?” she began. “Well, around the same time that [Wendy’s] said they weren’t going to do that because people complained, I noticed that my small coffee — my small iced coffee from Wendy’s — suddenly became child size.”

Admitting she was “embarrassed” to go to Wendy’s enough to notice, Red said she eventually spoke to an employee who admitted that the cups had changed, meaning “now it’s the old kid’s size that’s the small.”

Responding to one commenter claiming that Wendy’s cups were “huge,” Red showed the tiny iced coffee she had received; “Trust me, I’m just as disappointed as you are… to be fair [I don’t know] about their soft drink sizes, I only get their iced coffee.”

“I’m not upset about the change other than it was done in a shady way and don’t think they lowered the price accordingly,” she continued in the comment section.

And Red wasn’t the only one to notice “shrinkflation” at work, with one person writing, “Wendys has changed their cup sizes at LEAST 2x over the last year. For all items — drinks [and] frosty. I don’t go often and am always surprised.”