Maybe they shouldn’t have started price gouging to such a ridiculous degree.
If Dave Thomas was still alive he would shut down all Wendy’s.
Another US company going under?
Oh noes.
Oh well.
Next.
Cheap - Fast - Good
You only have to pick 2 to be successful as a fast food joint and they picked none.
Have they thought about not charging exorbitant prices on their food? I mean, a salad shouldn’t cost ten bucks. Especially when they halved the god damn thing out of nowhere and pretended like they didn’t. As one of the three people who enjoyed Wendy’s salads, I fucking saw what you did.
The problem is not fast food prices, the problem is stagnated wages.
Oligarchs. Guillotines. That’s the solution.
How did stagnated wages hurt their sales?
I’m not sure where the question is coming from, but stagnated wages means that as prices rise due to inflation, people make the same wage and their spending power goes down. And when their spending power goes down, they have to spend more on necessities like rent/mortgate, transportation, groceries. It leaves less disposable income for things like fast food, entertainment, et cetera.
Have they thought about not charging exorbitant prices on their food?
I’m sure they have. But when rental prices are skyrocketing and margins on meals are collapsing, there’s not a ton of wiggle room. One of the smart long-term moves that McDonalds made - way back in the 1980s - was to make sure they owned the real estate under all of their corporately owned restaurants. This was an expensive move up-front, but it paid enormous dividends long term.
Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell & KFC, etc - they’re all largely operating out of a retail rental market that’s consolidated into a handful of mega-REITs. And as those REITs demand steadily increasing ROI, the cost of operating storefronts has driven quite a few of these storefronts out of business.
It was a smart move for mcdonald’s corporate, but they’re using that advantage just to squeeze the franchisees all the same and the high prices for their awful offerings reflect that. Wendy’s has better beef than mcdonald’s sad meat discs, so I’d rather eat at wendy’s if I had to choose between the two. Thankfully I have other choices, so I choose neither.
Thankfully I have other choices, so I choose neither.
At least post-COVID, there’s been a mini-revival of locally owned and operated restaurants owing to the space cleared by the office park real estate bust.
Lots of new little shops opening up. We’ll see how long they last.
I wonder if they ever tried, ya know…making their food taste good?
They tried raising prices, they tried shrinkflation, they tried paying their employees as little as legally possible, they tried lowering staffing levels to the least number of employees humanly possible, they even floated the idea of surge pricing in fast food…but the whole time I’ve known Wendy’s to exist, at least in my area, the burgers have been bland and the fries have been soggy and tasteless. And I’m old enough to remember Wendy’s having a bland salad bar to go with the rest of their bland food.
i call it cheapflation.
I would settle for cheap again. I used to always have a go to wendy’s meal that was a small chilli, 2 spicy chicken snack wraps and a Jr bacon cheese burger with a small drink (you put the chilli in the wraps and burgers). Since it was all off the cheap menu it used to be well under $10, then it was $15, then $17 and the last time I was there it was just over $20, that is just not a thing anyone can look at and think worthwhile.
Maybe nobody wants a $10 fast food burger
Sir, this isn’t a Wendy’s anymore.
Sir, this was a Wendy’s
20 years from now:
“What’s a Wendy’s?”
I was eating something I made at home for lunch today and pondering how much it cost me for what was a good, hearty, healthy meal. Even eating in generous proportions, I was eating for about $2 a meal. I had carbs, fats, protein, fiber, and various minerals as well vitamins. I don’t think I could get a single cheeseburger from Wendy’s for that price. Even their cheap ones. As well it’s not just them, it’s all fast food. They forgot the idea is you go there, spend like $5 for a meal that you don’t have to make at home. Giving some variety.
making it yourself is much cheaper, fast food and restuarants are quite expensive. if one were to eat out everyday, it would be like 50-100$/day easily this is an extreme example, due to enabling partners, thinking they have infinite amount of money i know people that spends beyond thier means and the wife is always doing this.
Good riddance. I haven’t given them a dime since their new CEO tried to make his mark at the company by introducing
dynamic pricingprice gouging.Apparently that POS left Wendy’s in July 2025 and now works at The Hershey Company, but the damage is done. I’m never going back. There are better local burger joints around here anyway.
And before that, PepsiCo, so if “CEO” wasn’t enough indicator that he was a complete ghoul.
Yeah Pepsico 2019-2024… And Pepsi is still operating in Russia today unlike competitors that left because of the invasion of Ukraine.
Guy is a complete piece of shit and regularly makes the shittiest decisions. At this point it seems like he’s one of those CEOs the Board hires to implement the shit they want but don’t want to take the flak for.
Has Hershey’s made any changes like that yet? If not, it’s probably around the corner.
The chocolate business is struggling, due to high tariffs. I’m sure it’s a daily issue at Hershey’s right now.
this was the last time I had wendy… after the variable price story I went elsewhere for my fast food burger. everywhere has a big bacon burger… so no loss.
Why did Wendy leave? The bacon ate her.
Just raise your prices more, I’m sure that’ll help!
Honestly, the ridiculous prices of fast food has been the best thing for my health. I never ate it a lot, but I would sometimes grab something if I didn’t have time to cook or make something at home, now that’s totally off the table, if I wanted to spend $45 for burgers for two people I would take us to an actual local restaurant and get higher quality food that supports a local economy.
I haven’t touched fast-food since before covid.
I never ate it a lot, but I would sometimes grab something if I didn’t have time to cook or make something at home
If your health was an issue due to you barely eating out to begin with, it wasn’t what you were eating that was affecting your health.
I literally stopped going there after spending $15 and still being hungry.
Yep we went in the last time for 4 for 5, used to be 4 for 4. Found it was 10 dollars for same thing. Said nope and walked out. Not going back.
I’m eating out a lot less, these days. I used to head out for the day with the idea of grabbing lunch first, but now I usually eat lunch at home first. At the price of eating out, with the quality of fast food slipping so badly at the same time, it’s cheaper and far more satisfying to eat at home anyway. I found myself eating some poor approximation of food, and wishing I had just made a sandwich at home, so that’s what I started doing.
Wendy’s has always my favorite burger joint, after Culver’s, so my change in eating habits is directly contributing to their downfall.
The other lesson here is that if Wendy’s is slipping this badly, so are all the others.
AND finally, this: If they are slipping so badly, and much of it due to rising labor costs, this will motivate them to start automating their fast food operations. Every fast food company has been researching robotic preparation, and they could easily implement it tomorrow. The only reason they haven’t is because there will be a huge outcry when the first one does it. After that, they fall like dominos, and with a few years after the first one, ALL fast food restaurants will be mostly automated, and MILLIONS of fast food workers will lose their jobs. It is inevitable.
Not Wendy’s, but 3medium whoppers at burgerking costs more than 3 family sized entrays, crab ragoons, and eggrolls at my Thai place. Bk is a single sitting, the Thai place is 3 meals worth of food for the family and cooked by a sweet old lady that lives in my neighbourhood. Why would I ever eat corpo trash if it’s not cheap, fast, or easy to get?
As for Wendy’s, they dug their grave when they mentioned surge pricing. I’m just pissed that it took them this long to lay down in it.
But in Wendy’s defence, the little line for the stock holders went up for one more quarter. Who needs long term success when you can just make line go up by a 1/4 of a percent for a few more months?
Don’t forget they were also cool and funny on the internet once upon a time. So they definitely should get a pass here and we should bail them out as loyal customers.
AND finally, this: If they are slipping so badly, and much of it due to rising labor costs, this will motivate them to start automating their fast food operations. Every fast food company has been researching robotic preparation, and they could easily implement it tomorrow. The only reason they haven’t is because there will be a huge outcry when the first one does it. After that, they fall like dominos, and with a few years after the first one, ALL fast food restaurants will be mostly automated, and MILLIONS of fast food workers will lose their jobs. It is inevitable.
And the price will stay the same or go higher allowing corporations to fatten their bottom line.
Absolutely. Just like these tariffs. When the tariffs are eventually removed, will we see lower prices in the retail stores? Here and there, maybe, but generally, this will be the new price baseline. And the saving from the tariffs will just go to the corporate profits, not to lower prices, or even higher wages, just bigger executive bonuses.
They aren’t closing due to rising labor costs. If anything, the US gov is making sure the hourly rates don’t move with inflation. Didn’t we hear lately of a state that actually LOWERED the minimum wage for teenagers ?
Where I live, actual home-style cooking at roadside eateries is cheaper.
Wendy’s deserves to go under.
Few other places have hyper-inflated their prices to not pay their employees more nor improve their food quality quite like Wendy’s has.
Culver’s and maybe some local joints are some of the very last places its worth buying a burger from. Might as well solely make them at home for now on.
I worked at Culver’s when I was younger, so when I make burgers at home they essentially ARE Culver’s burgers. Right down to the seasoning.
But I do still love me some Culver’s. I can’t easily do custard or fried cheese curds at home.
The only thing I’ll miss from Wendy’s is dipping their fries in the frosties.
Yeah, the last time I ate at a Wendy’s I was astounded by the decline in quality, especially in comparison with their increased prices.
Last time I ate there I got a deal where I got two burgers and 10 nuggets for free. Nuggets tasted fine. The burger was atrocious. I opted to not even bother unwrapping the second burger because it had been so unpleasant to choke down the first. If I hadn’t been so hungry, it would have been one bite and nope.
Their spicy chicken sandwich is okay. Not my favorite, but good when they’re doing a buy one, get one.
But I agree the prices in general are way too high and the only reason I eat there is because I have a deal where I sometimes get their food for free (in which case I think the price is absolutely fair).
Culver’s is the goat
Culver’s is… interesting.
I find I don’t like the paper-thin style burgers much (though the fish sandwich is probably the best fast-food fish sandwich on the market) but it always gives the impression they’re trying a little harder. The restaurant always seems clean and a bit of effort was done on the appearance, like they’re still in 1978 and taking the family for a sit-down meal there might be an option.
OTOH, the customer base seems to be people who have been going there since 1978, but that could be my location.
They’re opening a new one 3km from my house, next to a McDonalds that hasn’t made a single order correctly since it opened in ~2015, so it will be interesting to see how the market shakes out.
Culver’s is great it’s just too bad they refuse to set up shop in California. The closest ones are right past the border in the side of Arizona.
What about the CEO’s new yacht though? I’m sure it’s very nice.
P. Terry’s if you’re ever lucky.
Why can’t I get past the Terry Pratchett similarity?
GNU Sir Terry Pratchett
Culver’s is the best fast food out there, and their prices are still fairly reasonable. I’ve had a bunch of different things off their menu, and they’re all really good. I was hooked on their pot roast sandwiches for a while, them their fish.
