This week’s been another busy one, so instead of half-assing a new article, I’ve decided to revisit a couple of old topics that have since had some further developments.
Yelp
The Wall Street Journal has reported on a potential acquisition of Yelp (a service I use a lot) by Groupon (a service I have never used). As of writing this, neither companies have elaborated further on this.
Considering the fact that Groupon is valued at $1.7 billion and Yelp is valued at $2.4 billion, in my personal, not at all savy of how billion-dollar companies work, opinion, a merger of the two seems much more likely than one outright buying the other.
Would this acquisition do anything to change Yelp’s seedy ways? Hard to say. Groupon themselves is arguably making their money unscrupulously, albeit a little more transparently. Their business model boils down to this: After the customer uses one of their coupons, Groupon takes half of the sales price after the discount. In other words, if Groupon issues a coupon for 50% off an item, Groupon takes another 25%, leaving the business owner with 25% of the potential revenue on that sale. And considering the food cost alone of an average restaurant item can range from 25%-30%, this is a dangerous game for restauranteurs to play. But ultimately, they can still choose to just not use Groupon; a restaurant’s presence on Yelp is a little more involuntary.
From the consumer side, there are a number of possible benefits. If the sites were to be integrated into each other, Yelp customers would be able to easily see if the business they’re reading reviews for is participating in Groupon, and Groupon customers would be able to quickly see reviews for the businesses where discounts are being offered. On Grelp’s side of things, this would likely increase the combined time customers spend using both services.
Popeyes
In the wake of their chicken sandwich’s rise and fall, Popeyes tweeted… this.
Yall… I can understand why they would want to stop making the sandwich. There were plenty of pictures and videos of disgruntled Popeyes employee’s reactions reactions to the customers’ rabid behavior amidst all the other tweets, it’s not a great look for a company to drive their employees into the ground like that. Plus, all the chicken cutlets, buns, pickles and mayo would have taken storage space away from what are supposed to be the company’s core competencies.
But this? This is just petty.
They could have just let the sandwich fade off into obscurity. They could have eventually brought it back at an increased price, and used that money to pay the workers making hundreds of sandwiches an hour a little more to keep them (somewhat) appeased. Or, they could have done a one-day sandwich pop-up for National Fried Chicken Day or something.
Instead, they’ve said “fuck off” to their recently won-over fans, driving many back to Chick-fil-A.
And their Twitter heading still says the sandwich will be back soon, so why did they even bother?
