Subscription Services

Sorry Siri must be hung over this morning.

Two words: "recurring revenue". It sucks, but it's profitable.

Every business (aside from some medical and drug companies) has likely been hit with declining revenues due to the pandemic. The restaurant/dining industries have been hit very hard.

They are looking to create cash flow. This is the basic cash flow model, of you pay me $2 today for a hamburger on Tuesday.

It might seem small to a consumer, the upfront cash outlay, but when the restaurant chain groups them together, it’s a pretty good discounted cash flow equation. They get your money for your purchases in advance, and provide the food over the next 30 days. They also model in the customers who will pay, and will use it once or twice, which is likely a decent portion of the population.

I’m sure Taco Bell did a lot of analysis using predictive models, and consumer habits, prior to creating the offering. They can sell tacos for a very cheap price, so their COGS is likely pennies per basic taco, so they know this deal works well for them.

^ yeah because most people aren’t going to just get that 1 taco and leave. They’ll get some nachos and a drink, and a chalupa. Normally they wouldn’t even go in but they gotta get their discounted taco.

Why sell a product once when you can sell it every day for no extra work?

This is not new. Car companies have been selling leases for decades.

Same principle. Buy it now, pay for it now, then buy it again and pay for it again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

If you're buying a subscription service for fast food, then you need to reevaluate your life choices.

It doesn't seem worth it.

Yeah, it's an interesting trend. They know it's like the gym; for every person who uses it enough to make it lose money for the company there are others who will forget about it or barely use it. Plus, these programs get you in the door and support loyalty.

Some car washes have an Unlimited Car Wash Club. Unlimited car washes for a month for a fixed price. They also increased the price for an individual car wash to make the unlimited washes seem more appealing - $13 regular wash and $30 unlimited washes.

They know that only a few people will wash a clean car just to make use of the unlimited washes and with automatic renewal on your credit card they have as was stated above, "recurring revenue."

Anything I have other than cellphone, gym, I try to cancel immidiately. If i need I'll sign up again cause yeah like JamesSD said I'll forget about it.

If there was a beer subscription service - where you pay upfront and get free beer at a bar for the rest of the month - that might be interesting.

^ There is a beer of the month club, I’ve seen advertisements for it.

It was not so long ago that analysts were all about how Millenials were cutting the cable cord, and switching to streaming services. Now, all the cable services are offering streaming. Even worse, they make sure their best and hottest shows are exlusive to the streaming service. You may get Disney in your cable/satellite package, but if you want The Mandalorian, MCEU, or other Star Wars features, you have to get Disney+. At least HBOMax has most of the same shows available on their standard Cable/Sat channel; but they do add a lot of goodies to the streaming service and do not force you to add a streamer. The loooooooong-awaited live-action Halo: CE series was supposed to play on Showtime, and that is only reason I kept showtime while I was trimming the fat off my cable budget. Now, those fuckers moved it over to Paramount+, forcing me into another streamer if I want to see it. I refused to subscribe to Amazon Prime (I'm just one man, but I am not going to enrich Bezos and China), but my wife gave me a subscription for Christmas, so we can have Whole Foods delivered instead of making the long trek to their store. That is like the ultimate subscription rip off. I haven't been impressed by any of their shows or movies, except maybe Jack Ryan and The Expanse.