This reminds me of the early days of Groupon (and the many knock-off competitors it inspired).
The pitch to business owners was “Sign up, offer a one-time loss leader through us, and gain a new full-price loyal customer for life.”
The pitch to consumers was “Never pay full price again. Everything can be had with major discounts everywhere with a matching Groupon!”
Either of those things might be true. But they can’t both be true. At least not at the same time at the same place.
By and large Groupon foundered because it turns out the consumer come-on was the one that was mostly true while the business come-on was mostly false. Groupon users were the antithesis of loyal; simply chasing lowest price via whatever means online or off with no thought of loyalty and very little to product or service quality.
Once enough businesses learned that lesson, the collective support for offering Groupon deals crashed.
I remember when Groupon was the new hot dotcom. As I remember, Google offered five billion to buy it out but management turned them down. I don’t think it’s ever approached that value.
Hell, I remember there being a pilot, or at least a pitch, for a prime-time sitcom about Groupon. I’m sure it was mentioned in a thread here at some point.
I used Groupon twice in the last month - once for an initial dental cleaning/x-ray/exam at my very good dentist for my daughter ($40), and once for $10 off dinner at a local Indian restaurant (a very good place but overpriced without a discount). I’d pretty much forgotten about Groupon, and most of the deals now look like ripoffs, but there are still some good ones out there.
On that theme, I highly recommend, “MoviePass, MovieCrash”, on HBO. The gist of it is that they were offering way more than they could support. Despite dire warnings, you might say that the Titanic his the iceberg.
I saw a secondary list of Red Lobster locations that will probably close due to expensive leases. I haven’t been to a Red Lobster in probably at least 15 years & don’t remember it being all that good but I want to go now before they’re only a memory. Can’t say I’ve ever had their Cheddar Bay biscuits either so I guess I’ll try them whenever we do go. I have seen their biscuits in the frozen section of the grocery store but didn’t buy them.