Being suspicious of corporations is great, but it does seem like a lot of people to take any announcement by a big company, interpret it in the least charitable way possible (even if it doesn’t make sense), and then get mad based on the interpretation they came up with.
If people were really against variable prices as a concept, they’d already be boycott every business with a happy hour, but they’re not. They’re just assuming Wendy’s plans to dramatically raise prices and was dumb enough to draw attention to it. And really, even without an announcement, raising prices beyond the rate of inflation doesn’t make sense, because if they’re remotely competent, they’re already charging as much as people are willing to pay. Wendy’s has every reason to believe that just arbitrarily raising prices faster then the industry as a whole will hurt their bottom line.