Dave Thomas, a successful Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise owner in Columbus, Ohio, and a protégé of its founder, Colonel Harlan Sanders, struggled in 1969 to find a name for a new hamburger idea he hoped would open. The fast-food burger market was saturated, but Thomas believed there was an opening to target richer young adults – the Baby Boomer generation – who were dissatisfied with hamburger chains for children. These customers, he believed, craved fresh beef and their own selection of side dishes and would be willing to pay higher prices for a better quality burger. Thomas wanted to name the restaurant after one of his five children and turn it into a family business. But none of his children’s names match the nostalgic, family personality he wanted to create for the business. From his custody of Saunders at KFC, Thomas had learned the value of using a mascot to create an emotional connection with customers and a “restaurant-linked personal identity,” he told Dave’s Way in his 1991 autobiography. . He found what he thought was the perfect name and mascot for his fourth child. Melinda Lou, Thomas’s eight-year-old daughter, was nicknamed Wenda when she was born because her siblings could not pronounce her name. Soon after, her family started calling her Wendy. Thomas told his daughter one day at home to pull her hair with pigtails and took pictures with his camera. She was wearing a dress with blue and white stripes that her mother sewed for the photos that would eventually make her a fast food mascot, recognized around the world. “To me, nothing could be more appealing than showing a little girl smiling and rosy,” said Thomas, enjoying one of his hamburgers. “That was her clean, rubbed, freckled face. I knew that was the name and the image for the business.” The full name he chose – “Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers” – caused nostalgia and the choice of a small child to act as a brand character was a long tradition in American branding. Jell-O, Morton Salt, Sun-Maid and others used girls and boys as brand mascots. But Thomas later regretted his decision to name what would become a fast-food empire after his daughter, believing he had given her too much attention and pressure. “She lost a little of her privacy,” he said in his autobiography. “Because some people still take her for the company spokesperson, sometimes she refuses to give her opinion. I do not blame her.” Before Thomas died in 2002, he apologized to his daughter, who named the restaurant after her. Thomas told her, “I should have given him my name because he was pushing you so hard,” recalls Wendy Thomas-Morse, who later became Wendy’s franchisee, in a blog post about the chain’s 50th anniversary in 2019.
“WHERE IS THE NUT?”
Wendy’s first restaurant opened in downtown Columbus, Ohio in 1969. It had a luxurious hue, with carpet, Tiffany lamps, hanging beads and bent wood chairs. All the workers wore white aprons, with men in white trousers, white shirts and black bow ties, and women in white dresses and scarves. This gave “a sense of cleanliness and tradition,” Thomas said. Wendy’s hamburgers were twice as big as rival chains. Baby Boomers with disposable income would increase to become Wendy’s main customers, and Wendy’s later added salads, baked potatoes, stuffed pies and other foods to serve them. In the mid-1970s, 82% of Wendy’s customers were over 25, “unlike all competitors,” wrote John Jakle and Keith Sculle in their 1999 book Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age ». Within a decade, there were more than 1,000 Wendy’s in the United States. The company became famous for its square beef burgers – to emphasize that they were bigger than the competitors’ round buns – and the humorous commercial like 1984’s “Where’s the beef”? campaign, which helped increase Wendy’s annual revenue by 31% that year. The slogan became so popular that Walter Mondale, the Democrats’ final candidate for the presidency that year, asked Gary Hart’s main rival during a debate. Thomas himself became the brand’s public figure, appearing in more than 800 Wendy’s commercials from 1989 until his death in 2002. The Guinness Book of World Records has recognized his position as “Longest-Running TV Advertising Campaign” a company founder. ” With a popular, popular accent, Thomas usually appeared in a short-sleeved white shirt and a red tie to advertise his burgers. “Wendy’s hamburgers are square and old-fashioned. Dave Thomas was square and old-fashioned,” said one advertising expert when Thomas died. Although Thomas may have apologized for naming his daughter in the chain, Wendy Thomas-Morse appeared in a 2011 ad featuring Wendy’s new cheeseburgers as the “hottest and juiciest ever” ever named by her father. It was the first time she had been used in an advertising campaign as a national pitchwoman for Wendy’s. The burgers, he says on the spot, “would make Dad say, ‘Here’s the beef.’
