I thought managers specials were a bit more rare these days. In the past, it was a way for stores to make extra profit on sale items. I’ll use cookies as an example, because that’s what I sold to ShopRite for about 2 decades. Say Oreos are on sale for $1.99 (a price you’ll never see these days). The store is paying $1.79 per package. At the end of the sale, a store will “buy in” on a few pallets of Oreos, and will stop buying them from the vendor until they run out. Until that time, they will put them on a managers special for something like 2 for $5, which will increase their margins and also continue to drive sales by providing a value to the customer. Everyone wins. Most vendors have switched over to a paid for performance model driven by Nielsen or IRI scan data from the registers and the stores will be compensated for how much they sell during the sale. You can run a lighter back room this way, stabilize sales, and provide incentive to put them on display while they are on sale.

Source: I have sold a LOT of fucking cookies in my life.