Andrew F. Smith

Wendy’s

Appears in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

By Andrew F. Smith

Published 2004

  • About

The restaurant chain Wendy’s was significant in changing the public’s perception of fast food, challenging conventional wisdom by successfully offering upscale menu items to consumers at prices far higher than its major competitors. Under the direction of the founder, R. Dave Thomas, Wendy’s became the third-largest fast food chain in the United States within a decade of its inception, behind only McDonald’s and Burger King, and a leading innovator in the American restaurant industry.

Thomas learned the restaurant trade early in life, having escaped an unhappy home at the age of twelve by working the night shift at a local diner. He was living on his own by age fifteen. Thomas worked in several restaurants, gaining experience and honing his ideas about product quality and customer service. At age seventeen he enlisted in the army as a cook, soon gaining a reputation for crafty resourcefulness, which led to positions of quickly increasing responsibility. Recognized for his competence, Thomas, just two years later, was hired to manage an enlisted men’s club in Germany, where he improved the menu offerings and increased food sales from forty dollars each day to more than seven hundred dollars.