Of course it's popular. They are selling their product at 20-25% the normal rate and feeding you to do it. The only thing it does is devalue the product. A bowling center isn't WalMart. You don't make it up in volume.
As someone that has spent time working in the bowling industry I would expect you to understand the economics of running a bowling center and not defend $8.00 specials.
$8.00 specials are put on by proprietors that don't understand the cost to run their business.
You can please part of the people part of the time, but cannot please all the people all the time. You have every reason to criticize, due to freedom of speech, but, being on the outside looking in, it's only a personal individual comment/feeling and quite useless unless one is directly involved, which I figure you are not.