WENDY, michael, john..tinkerbell come on..!. . .Wendy's agrees to be taken over by. . .

[Kramerica]

lol

[JoeH]

I think Wendy's has been floundering a bit since the passing of its founder, Dave Thomas, in 2002. Not sure why, but the product changes just seem to be more of a follow the latest trend the last few years. In one interview of him, he said he liked to put out sandwiches that he would like to eat. I guess his taste matched mine a lot of the time. It also seems a number of the franchisees have not done a good job of keeping up their operations.

Case in that vein was the former franchise holder for the stores here in Western Mass. Formerly an attorney for Wendy's corporate offices in Dublin, Ohio, he bought up a total of 13 stores here. But he never spent anything more than he had to on equipment upgrades and furnishings. So, for instance, the local store had an POS/order system that was put in over 10 years ago, the last several years had frequent failures. If the store had not had a number of counter persons who could do orders and cashiering with pencil and paper would have had to just close. But the slow orders when it was down slowly drove away customers. He ended up closing all stores last summer suddenly when he stopped paying his bills for product and they stopped shipping any more food to his stores. A couple months before that one of his lenders started foreclosure proceedings on 5 stores whose purchase had been funded by a their loan to him. He is currently facing criminal charges for issuing employee paychecks that bounced. Wendy's did manage to acquire 11 of the locations in the foreclosure proceedings by another lender or through having a partial ownership. Most need major renovations, one will be torn down and rebuilt. So far 2 or 3 have been re-opened, closest to me is 20 miles away, though only a few miles from where I work.

[JPK]

My fast food dreams will only come true when In-n-Out Burger comes to Chicagoland!

JPK

[JoeH]

[quote MGS_forgot_password]Well, if they force Wendy's to start having Pepsi instead of Coke, I'll never go again.
Agreed. When Pepsi acquired the Pizza Hut chain in the early '80's. all the stores were required to switch to Pepsi. Before that it was the store's option. The local one had been serving Coke as it was more popular in this region. That one switch cost most Pizza Hut's in the region a good fraction of their business. I go there a lot less as well, maybe 2 or 3 times a year.

A few larger PH's had been serving both, I heard from one that they had been serving Coke to Pepsi in about a 2 to 1 ratio.

[Jimmypoo]

[quote bazookaman]
The old Wendy's was like walking into your local hardware store. the new Wendy's is like walking into Lowes.
I have never ONCE seen door knobs on the menu at Wendy's. Are you sure you aren't
mistaking them for KFC, which serves them up daily, under cover of spices & batter?



What I miss from Wendy's and would have me going there at least once a week, is the
salad bar. Not that hot food crap they used to display..... though that had a purpose
when it was first unveiled, but just the cold bar.

Only cheap steakhouses like Ponderosa or Ryans or Golden Corral, etc., had one that
even comes close...... When I was in college, $3.99 was a lot vs. 6 tacos from Taco Hell
for $2, but I used to go there a lot, because everything was fresh and you never bit into
bone and gristle at the salad bar.

Dave should be sainted - and pulled out of his grave and put on display at all the
restaurants as an attraction. Revive the salad bar along with it, and it will pull
more than the above post about yanking some dude out of the ground after 40 years.....

[OWC Jamie]

iirc, the salad bars at Wendy's are gone because of some wise ass leaving bodily fluids and poison ivy juice for their x-wife.

I can remember when juicy juicy at Wendy's meant the hamburg was about 40% lean.

[JoeH]

Yeah, I miss the salad bar, and slightly less, miss the hot bar. But even though profitable, too many operators complained it was not "fast food" enough and took up too much space and prep space. But that slightly less "rushed" eating experience of getting the salad or whatever was one other reason I preferred Wendy's.

As for what billb heard, nothing of the sort was responsible for the bars being pulled. Some stores stopped doing the hot and cold bars back in the early to mid '90's, Wendy's pulled support finally about 10 years ago.

Okay, now I have read jimmypoo's other thread and see where you are coming from billb. :-)

[RAMd®d]

I liked most food at Wendy's, especially the baked potatoes, with the sole exception being the burgers. The meat was completely lacking in flavor.

The fries are pretty good though.

I just ate at In-n-Out yesterday, and had the fries, something I don't usually do. And I won't be doing it again anytime soon.

But a DD and chocolate shake hit the spot just fine.

[raz]

[quote billb]iirc, the salad bars at Wendy's are gone because of some wise ass leaving bodily fluids and poison ivy juice for their x-wife.
You may be right. However, the owner of the Wendy's we were patronizing at the time told me that the salad bar got killed due to labor costs. Apparently, it took an entire employee to keep it stocked and clean.

[Jimmypoo]

My invention has nothing to do with bodily fluids! Only poison ivy and thorns! So there!