The Untold Truth Of Wendy's

The special menu at Wendy's isn't exactly a well-kept secret, which is great for customers who want to try something a little out of the ordinary. If you're tired of chicken nuggets, check out some of the offerings on the secret menu. There's a one-pound Meat Cube burger and a Barnyard Burger which has beef, bacon, and chicken. A lot of secret menu items really pack on the protein, so for a lighter option, try the Valley Crispy Chicken Club sandwich.

When Wendy's was launched in 1969, there were just five items on the menu. His ideas for the restaurant resulted in criticism from some experts in the industry, so Dave Thomas didn't have great ambitions for the first Wendy's he opened in Columbus, Ohio (per Funding Universe). He simply wanted a small, local chain where his kids could work in the summers. 

Despite his modest expectations, Thomas soon found himself with a successful business. He opened a second Wendy's after a year and by 1974, sales totaled at nearly $25 million. By the end of 1976, not even a decade since the company was started, there were 500 Wendy's locations.

A lot of people seem to think the modern Wendy's logo, redesigned in 2013, has a secret message hidden in it. In the picture, it looks like the word "mom" is hidden in Wendy's collar. While some thought this was a reference to a home-cooked meal just like Mom would make, it turns out the "hidden message" was just a coincidence.

"We are aware of this and find it interesting that it appears our Wendy cameo has 'mom' on her ruffled collar. We can assure you it was unintentional," said a spokesperson for the company.

Many fast food restaurants these days have value menus which offer items at a lower price. Wendy's was the first to utilize this now-popular concept, launching the first value menu in 1989, nearly a decade before Burger King got on the value menu train in 1998.

Denny Lynch, the senior VP of communications for Wendy's, explained why the company decided to offer menu items at a discounted price. "At that time, all of the hamburger chains were going after each other and it escalated to the point where we were seeing 99-cent Whoppers and Big Macs," he said. "These prices were on permanent signage, they weren't being done as a limited-time promotion. From (Wendy's) perspective, the market share battles were so intense that chains were discounting their flagship items."

To compete with other restaurants lowering prices on key menu items, the Wendy's value menu was created. "We had the idea of rather than selling one of our big items at 99 cents, creating a whole menu with 99-cent items," said Lynch. "We wanted our customers to be able to make a full meal with these lower-priced items."

Wendy's launched a series of memorable commercials in the 1980s featuring a woman whose catch phrase "Where's the beef?" would become famous. The commercials were so successful that Wendy's become synonymous with the "where's the beef" lady. The actress, Clara Peller, would only star in 10 commercials despite her popularity. She was fired in 1985 for starring in a spaghetti sauce commercial for Campbell's.

In the commercial, Peller looked at spaghetti sauce and announced that she had found the beef, angering Wendy's. A spokesperson for Wendy's said, "The commercial infers that Clara found the beef at somewhere other than Wendy's restaurants. Unfortunately, Clara's appearance in the ads makes it extremely difficult for her to serve as a credible spokesperson for our products."

Like most businesses, Wendy's started out small before expanding its reach and offerings. When it first opened in 1969, according to Insider, it offered a minimalist menu containing exactly five items: hamburgers, french fries, Frostys, soft drinks, and chili. And for many diners, Wendy's chili has become pure comfort food. Mild and tomatoey with a base of ground beef and beans (per Brand Eating), no one will mistake it for a five-alarm, prize-winning Texas chili recipe. Still, diners appreciate its approachability and affordability. "Baked potato and chilli with a frosty from Wendy's the greatest three-course cheap meal in all of American fast food," a Reddit poster wrote. "It's wretched. Awful. Just the worst. And I get some every time to dunk my fries in," another poster wrote.

In retrospect, chili may seem like an odd choice of menu item for a bare-bones burger shack just starting out. But there may have been a practical, as well as culinary, reason for its inclusion. It's an open secret (per So Yummy!) that the ground beef in Wendy's chili comes in part from beef patties that have spent too much time on the grill to be served as burgers: These overcooked (but edible) patties are collected, frozen, and later used for batches of chili. And for the most part, diners don't have a problem with this. "I think it's a great way to repurpose their meat," a Reddit poster wrote.

Wendy's bet on baked potatoes paid off: The chain found them to be both affordable and popular with nutrition-minded diners. It's safe to assume other fast-food chains keep close tabs on their competitors and saw that the potatoes were giving Wendy's an edge, but according to Thrillist, only a few (Arby's, Carl's Jr., and Burger King) attempted to offer their own versions — and currently, none of them have baked potatoes among their offerings. Why?

The answer, according to Thrillist, is logistics. While baked potatoes are simple to make at home (just toss a potato in a heated oven — wrapped in foil if you like a softer skin — and wait), making them in restaurant-sized quantities involves planning. Because potatoes take so long to bake, Wendy's installed special convection ovens in its restaurants to get the job done faster, a costly enterprise. And wrapping each of dozens of potatoes in foil, then unwrapping and custom-topping them for each customer is a lot more labor-intensive and time-consuming than scooping out an order of fries from under a heat lamp. So while the appeal of Wendy's baked potatoes is undeniable, competitors decided that trying to emulate their success was more trouble than it was worth.

A likely reason for the success of Wendy's was that founder Dave Thomas did his homework before opening his first location. He knew from childhood that he not only wanted to open a restaurant, but "the best restaurant in the world," since he loved both people and food. He got his first restaurant job as a teenager, and moved through several other restaurant related jobs, where he earned the mentorship and respect of owners, who knew of his desire to eventually own his own place.

Among the many restaurant veterans Thomas had befriended was Harland Sanders (aka Colonel Sanders), the founder of KFC, who became a close mentor. When a KFC franchise owner offered Thomas the opportunity to help him revive four failing restaurants — a task even Sanders warned him against — Thomas gladly took on the challenge, streamlining the restaurants' menus and devising creative marketing initiatives such as illuminated signs resembling buckets of chicken. His strategies were a success, and he eventually bought out all four restaurants.

Wendy's founder Dave Thomas was determined to make his restaurants different and better than other fast-food places, and among his innovations was the introduction of salad bars to his restaurants in 1979. At the time, this was a novel idea, and Wendy's became the first national chain to feature salad bars.

But just offering cut-up veggies and a choice of dressing wasn't enough for Wendy's. By the '80s, the salad bar had evolved into the Superbar, a full-blown hot-and-cold buffet where frugal diners could load up on everything from Mexican fare to pasta to, yes, salad for a low (even then) price of around $2.99. While a big step away from the restaurant's original focus of burgers and fries, the Superbar was a hit with customers, who knew a bargain when they saw one and basically loved the Superbar to death: It proved time-consuming and impractical for store employees to keep the bars clean and fully stocked, and diners helping themselves to multiple servings cut into food costs. Wendy's closed its Superbars in 1998 and eliminated its salad bars in 2006 — but a few stalwart Superbar superfans continue to campaign for its return.

Your mother probably told you not to play with your food — but there are no rules again playing games about your food. And fast-food chains have been offering up branded toys and games for years; McDonald's has long included toys in its Happy Meals and continues to offer games for its youngest customers.

Wendy's too has ventured into the branded game space. But instead of targeting children, the chain set its sights on young adults by developing a tabletop fantasy role-playing game, "Feast of Legends." Its structure and overall vibe would be familiar to any Dungeons and Dragons player (per CNET): Each player creates a character defined by five attributes (strength, intelligence, arcana, charm, and grace) and chooses one of twelve orders (who wants to join the Order of the Baconator?). The goal of the battle, of course, is to defend Queen Wendy and her realm of Freshtonia from the evil Ice Jester (who bears a probably-not-coincidental resemblance to Ronald McDonald) and his frozen-beef-touting minions. And while the game's world-building is self-consciously silly, the game play itself is serious — the downloadable PDF guide to the game is 97 pages long, per CNET.

While Wendy's has had a tumultuous relationship with breakfast food over the years (it launched and discontinued breakfast service three times between 1985 and 2013 before relaunching a breakfast menu in 2020), the chain has never given up on its desire to rule the breakfast table. And like all market-savvy brands, Wendy's seeks creative ways to keep itself top of mind among even customers who are nowhere near their restaurants. And the combination of these two impulses resulted in their latest treat — Wendy's Frosty Cereal by Kellogg's. Intended to emulate (or at least evoke) the richness of a chocolate Frosty, the cereal is available at supermarkets — no trip to Wendy's needed.

So how is it? According to the Food Network, the cereal consists of cocoa-coated cereal puffs along with chocolate-flavored marshmallows. Cerealously goes into a deeper drive with a detailed taste test, observing that the cereal puffs are essentially the same corn-based chocolate-flavored puffs as Cocoa Puffs, but "about 10 to 15% tastier," largely because they come glazed in chocolate. But a pet peeve of Cerealously is the tiny, hard marshmallow bits, which not only tend to stick between one's teeth but sink to the bottom of the box without contributing much flavor. But adding milk amps the cereal's Frosty vibe, with the cereal contributing a solid chocolate flavor to the milk.