Wendy's plans to close 5%-6% of its restauraunts in the United States within months and allow others to skip breakfast. With 6,000 outlets, that means more than 300 "underperforming" venues will soon be gone.
Wendy's interim CEO Ken Cook: "By closing consistently underperforming restaurants, we are enabling our franchise partners to increase focus on locations with the greatest potential for profitable growth. Since we announced this program in November, we have been working with our franchisees to evaluate restaurants on a store-by-store basis and make collaborative decisions to optimize performance across the U.S. system as One Wendy's."
That "One Wendy's" slogan sounds a bit ominous.
The recently-introduced Biggie Bags, bundling sandwiches with nuggets, fries and drinks, are a hit and will remain. $4 gets you a small sandwich and four nuggets, $6 double stacks the sandwich and comes with fries and a drink, and $8 gets you two sandwiches. But breakfasts aren't selling so well, and Cook "noted that many Wendy's locations have struggled to draw customers" in for them. So franchisees will be allowed to open later.
Anecdotally: fast food is a bad deal now and the quality is consistently low. My child prefers frozen supermarket nuggets to what you can get at McDs or anywhere else, and we have had stale food at Wendy's enough to have not gone there in at least a year.
Previously:
• Wendy's Hamburger mascot goes gray in support of fired news anchor
• Wendy's is making a Frosty breakfast cereal
