(CNN Business) — Pam’s. Kenny’s. Molly’s. Lori’s. Melinda’s…
Dave Thomas, a successful Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise owner in Columbus, Ohio, and protégé of founder Colonel Harlan Sanders, was struggling in 1969 to come up with a name for a new burger concept he hoped to open.
The fast-food burger market was becoming saturated, but Thomas believed there was an opening to target wealthier young adults, the Baby Boomer generation, who were dissatisfied with burger chains targeting children. He believed that these customers craved fresh meat and their own choice of ingredients and would be willing to pay higher prices for a better quality burger.
Thomas wanted to name the restaurant following one of his five children and make it a family business. But none of his children’s names fit the nostalgic, family-values persona he wanted to create for the business.
From his tutelage under Sanders at KFC, Thomas had learned the value of using a mascot to create an emotional connection with customers and a “personal identity tied to the restaurant,” he said in his 1991 autobiography “Dave’s Way.”
She found what she thought was the perfect name and character in her fourth daughter’s nickname.
Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s, had a folksy style and an everyman personality.
Melinda Lou, Thomas’s eight-year-old daughter, was nicknamed Wenda when she was born because her siblings mightn’t pronounce her name. Soon following, her family started calling her Wendy.
Thomas told his daughter at home one day to put her hair up in pigtails and took pictures with his camera. She wore a blue and white striped dress sewn by her mother for the photos of her that would eventually make her a world-renowned fast food character.
“To me, nothing would be a more compelling ad than showing a little, smiling, rosy-cheeked girl” enjoying one of their burgers, Thomas said. “It was her clean-brushed, freckled face. I knew that was the name and image of her business.”
The full name she chose, “Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers,” evoked nostalgia, and her choice of a young boy to serve as the brand character was a long-standing tradition at the American brand. Jell-O, Morton Salt, Sun-Maid and others used boys and girls as brand characters.
But Thomas later regretted his decision to name what would become a fast food empire following his daughter, believing it put too much attention and pressure on her.
Melinda Lou “Wendy” Thomas. Dave Thomas said he regretted naming the network following his daughter.
“She has lost some of her privacy,” he said in his autobiography. “Because some people still take her to be the official spokesperson for the company, sometimes she avoids speaking her mind. I don’t blame her.”
Before Thomas died in 2002, he apologized to his daughter for naming the restaurant following him.
Thomas told her, “I should have put my name on it, because it put so much pressure on you,” recalled Wendy Thomas-Morse, who later became a Wendy’s franchisee, in a blog post for the chain’s 50th anniversary in 2019.
‘Where’s the meat?’
The first Wendy’s restaurant opened in downtown Columbus, Ohio, in 1969.
It had a touch of luxury, with rugs, Tiffany lamps, dangling beads, and bentwood chairs. All the workers wore white aprons, the men in white trousers, a white shirt and a black bow tie, and the women in white dresses and scarves. This gave it “a sense of cleanliness and tradition,” Thomas said. Wendy’s hamburgers cost twice as much as rival chains.
Baby Boomers with disposable income would grow to become Wendy’s main customers, and Wendy’s later added salad bars, baked potatoes, stuffed pitas, and other foods to cater to them.
In the mid-1970s, 82% of Wendy’s customers were over the age of 25, “in marked contrast to 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 first “Old Fashioned Wendy’s Burgers” in Columbus, Ohio.
The company became known for its square beef patties, to emphasize that they were larger than the competition’s round buns, and humorous such as “Where’s the meat?” 1984, which helped increase Wendy’s annual revenue by 31% that year. The slogan became so popular that Walter Mondale, the eventual Democratic presidential candidate that year, put the question to his main primary opponent, Gary Hart, during a debate.
Thomas himself became the public face of the brand, appearing in more than 800 Wendy’s commercials from 1989 until his death in 2002. The Guinness Book of World Records has recognized his ads as “The longest-running television campaign starring by a company founder.
With a folksy appeal to everyone, Thomas usually appeared in a short-sleeved white shirt and red tie to promote his burgers.
“Wendy’s hamburgers are boxy and old-fashioned. Dave Thomas was boxy and old-fashioned,” said an expert when Thomas died.
Although Thomas may have apologized for naming the chain following his daughter, Wendy Thomas-Morse appeared in a 2011 commercial that featured Wendy’s new cheeseburgers as “the spiciest, juiciest ever”, who bears his father’s name. It was the first time she had used it in an campaign as a national host for Wendy’s.
The burgers, he says at the venue, “would have made Dad say, ‘Here’s the meat.'”