MapMuse - Locate Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers Near You

...International is the parent company of Wendy's, and is a publicly traded company. As of December 2006 there are approximately 6,700 stores, which makes Wendy's the number three burger chain after McDonald's (31,000 locations) and Burger King (11,200 locations). Approximately 77% of Wendy's restaurants are franchised, the majority of which are located in North America. Wendy's and its affiliates employs more than 57,000 people in its global operations. In fiscal year 2006, the firm had $2.45 billion (USD) in total sales. While Wendy's sets standards for exterior store appearance, food quality and menu, individual owners have control over hours of operations, interior decor, pricing and staff uniforms and wages.

In response to the 1986 slowdown, Wendy's restructured its cleanliness standards, menu and other operational details to insure that stores met the goals and standards of the parent company so that its franchises were competitive in the market.

Wendy's menu consists primarily hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, french fries and beverages. The company does not have a signature product such as the Whopper or the Big Mac, instead the burger patties it uses in preparing its sandwiches are its signature item. Unlike other major chains, Wendy's burgers are square instead of round. The company also advertises that its burgers are made from fresh ground beef, not frozen.

Wendy's was founded by Dave Thomas in 1969 and was named after Dave's second daughter, Melinda Lou Thomas, then 8 years old, whom her older siblings nicknamed "Wendy" (originally "Winda", stemming from the child's initial difficulty saying her own name), as Thomas stated in his A&E Biography show. The corporate headquarters is located in Dublin, Ohio. The first Wendy's restaurant was opened in Columbus, Ohio on November 15, 1969, and the chain grew rapidly to open over 3,000 restaurants by 1985. However, by the mid-1980s some under-performing Wendy's restaurants were closed. By 1986, Dave Thomas came out of retirement and started doing commercials for Wendy's and helped rebuild the restaurant until his death on January 8, 2002. In 1970, Wendy's was the first fast-food chain to offer a drive-through window. Implemented initially at Wendy's second location, the "Pick-Up Window" used a speaker box to allow a customer to drive up, place an order, then drive to the window to complete the order.

The first Wendy's Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, opened by Dave Thomas in 1969, was closed on March 2, 2007. The signs were removed from the building the morning after its last day in operation. Reasons cited for this closing included a lack of foot traffic by potential customers, the closure of museums within proximity of the restaurant, cost-prohibitive renovations that would have been needed, and the lack of an adequate parking lot in front of the facility. Additionally, there have been several large closures of Wendy's franchise groups in the last few years; most noticeably the closure of its Australian operations and the bankruptcy of the WenAmerica franchise group and closure of its fifty locations in the Midwest region of the US.

In Canada, as a result of Wendy's 1995 corporate acquisition of the Canadian doughnut chain Tim Horton's, many locations are joint Wendy's-Tim Horton's restaurants (although with separate staff at separate order counters).