It was founded by a 35-year old American, Dave Thomas on November 15, 1969 in downtown Columbus, Ohio. He had spent his career studying the fast food chain business before.

Following McDonald’s and Burger King, Wendy’s was the world’s third-largest hamburger fast food chain as of December 31, 2018 with total of 6.711 outlets worldwide. 353 are company-owned and 6.358 are franchised.

Wendy’s offers menu of hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, French fries and beverages. Unlike Burger King with Whopper or McDonald’s with Big Mac, Wendy’s don’t have signature sandwich since phasing out their Big Classic. Wendy’s uses square hamburger patties as its signature item, sea salt fries and Frosty, a soft-serve ice cream mixed with starches.

According to the Wendy’s official website, Dave Thomas opened his first Wendy’s restaurant at 257 East Broad Street, in Columbus, Ohio. He chose the name Wendy’s from his fourth child’s name, Melinda Lou Thomas. Her nickname was Wendy, it was pronounced by her siblings who couldn’t pronounce her name, so they started calling her Wenda, which then turned into “Wendy”.

Not just in food, Wendy’s also created a system order that was a breakthrough concept at the time. In November 1970, Wendy’s introduced the first modern drive through to the world coined as the “Pick-Up Window”. The innovation was so revolutionary that customers needed instructions on how to place an order using the speaker. It was originally called the “Drive-In Window” but Thomas wanted to change the name to attract wider customers.

In the 1970’s era, Wendy’s grew their business bigger. In March 1978, the 1000th Wendy’s restaurant opened in Springfield, Tennessee and broke records for being the company’s 1000th restaurant in just 100 months. Then in November 1980 the 2000th Wendy’s restaurant was opened, but not long after that the 3000th restaurant came to existent in February 1985, located in The French Quarter in New Orleans.

If you recall the term “Burger Wars” then Wendy’s was one of the participants. It was a fierce war between giant fast food chains in 1980’s between McDonald’s, Burger King and later Wendy’s. The war took places in advertisements, mainly TV commercials. The three restaurants smashed each other’s food through their ad campaigns such as price, taste and appearance.

One of the legendary TV commercial is the “Where’s the Beef?” North American commercial campaign. Starting on January 9, 1984, the commercial featured an old woman, performed by elderly actress Clara Peller, inspected a fluffy hamburger bun that lacked in beef meat and exclaimed, “Where’s the Beef ?”. It became so popular that the advertisement led to a 31% boost in Wendy’s annual revenue.

In 1990, US President George H.W. Bush asked Thomas to serve as a spokeperson for the national adoption initiative. As an adopted child himself, Dave Thomas raised awareness for children in foster care and foster care adoption. This was followed by the establishment of Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption (DTFA) in July 1992. He believed every child deserves a permanent, loving home.

Dave Thomas passed away in January 2002 at the age of 69. His legacy continues to grow in the Wendy’s business and supporting foster care adoption.