Wendy's Franchise Earnings, History, Subliminal LOGO, and Review

Wendy's Franchise is unquestionably one of the most iconic food brands out there. Founded by Dave Thomas in Columbus Ohio in 1969 at one time Wendy's was the third largest burger chain with over 6500 locations. Can you guess who the 2 top burger chains are ahead of Wendy's? If you answered McDonalds and Burger King you are correct.

A lot of people think Wendy's is still owned by founder Dave Thomas and his family who started Wendy's. But that's not the case. Now Dave, who was an Orphan and high school dropout started the restaurant with the lofty goal of having a place for his 5 kids to work eventually grew the chain to the fast food giant it is today.

Now for the hidden history of Wendy's most of you don't know. In 2008 Wendy's franchise was purchased by Triarc Companies for 2.34 billion. Now Mr. Thomas had since passed away but the remaining family was apparently not happy at this news. Thomas' daughter Pam Thomas Farber said "It's a very sad day for Wendy's, and our family. We just didn't think this would be the outcome,"
If her father were alive to hear news of the buyout, "he would not be amused," she said. Triarc was started way back in 1884 as the Deisel-Wemmer company, literally started with one man rolling cigars in his basement and now buying Wendy's for over 2 billion. True story.

So eventually the company was delisted and sold off, new blood introduced and DWG began to acquire controlling interests in other companies like propane, maintenance and storage, textiles and steel.The driving force behind these million dollar acquisitions was a man named Vic Posner who was not very well liked as he had a knack for hostile takeovers and was one of the first to practice a leveraged buyout, often buying companies and installing himself as chairman and president making him one of the highest paid executives of his time. He also got in trouble for using millions of dollars in company money for lavish vacations and hotel stays for he and his family. Very interesting story he ended up being sued by the SEC and shareholders, investigated for fraud and all manner of things but let's get back to Wendy's!

Triarc later acquired Arby's and ultimately in 2008 acquired Wendy's changing it's name from Triarc to Wendy's Arby's group.in 2011 they sold Arby's and became The Wendy's company, Wendy's International LLC.

But is a Wendy's franchise a good investment? Let's take a look. Taken from their 2018 Franchise Disclosure Documents the cost to invest in a Wendy's franchise is $2,018,500 to $3,654,000 if you purchase for cash, $570,500 to $1,127,000 if you finance,and $323,500 to $628,500 if you lease.

Wendy's franchise Royalties amount to 4% of Gross sales, national advertising 3.5% of gross sales, local advertising .5%

Wendy's franchise recently got into trouble for a massive data breech that affected over 1000 of their locations. Wendy's first claimed only 300 restaurants were affected, then finally admitting that over 1000 stores had been affected and customers names, credit or debit card information and more was stolen. Wendy's tried twice to have that one dismissed and finally agreed to settle for an undisclosed amount.

You may have seen certain Wendy's in your area getting a makeover. And these renovations aren't cheap costing franchisees between $450,000 to as much as $1.9 million per store. Wendy's sued Davco to try and force them to perform the renovations but eventually they got out of the situation by selling their stores to NPC. Now for you investors, the 2018 FDD does show an increase in revenue for stores that performed the renovations.

Wendy's has also had some negative press for refusing to join the Fair Food Program which has been called “one of the great human rights success stories of our day”and helps Floridas tomato workers with better wages and working conditions including monitoring of harassment and other injustices . Wendy's decision was to just start buying tomatoes from Mexico and a lot of people are unhappy. The website boycott-wendys.org has some very eye opening information regarding working conditions

Before we wrap up Wendy's recently updated their logo can you see a subliminal message? If you look really close you can see the word "MOM" in the ruffled collar of Wendy. Wendy's said it was not intentional.

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https://www.wendys.com/

http://www.boycott-wendys.org/why-wendys/

https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2015/02/03/wendy-s-to-get-up-to-475m-by-selling-500.html

http://www.franchisetimes.com/April-2015/Wendys-remodel-offers-no-ROI-DavCo-counters/

https://ciw-online.org/blog/2017/06/shareholder-update/ fair food program