The interesting history of Wendys

Sorry, I'm bored this week and this was the only idea that came to mind.

Wendy's started in 1969 by Dave Thomas in Columbus, OH. Sadly that location is no longer around due to poor sales, it closed in 2007. (Yikes!!)

But the company really got it's big push back in 1984 with their legendary commercial "Where's the Beef?" which became one of mos recognizable and copied commercials ever. The actress who played the old woman with the popular line was 86 year old Clara Peller who would go own to star in several commercials. One (in 1985) would actually get her fired from Wendy's and that would be a Prego commercial where she stated "I finally found the beef!"

After firing Clara, the company made an even more popular decision for its commercials after that...

Have the Founder make them. Growing up, I must have seen Dave Thomas in over 200 commercials for Wendy's. The man knew how to connect to the audience and was a genius at selling his own product.

Fun fact, but Wendy's is actually responsible for breaking up the band the Violent Femmes when it aired a commercial in 2007 that played "Blister in the Sun" The band was at odds over having their song so "commercialized" especially when they hated fast food. They later broke up in 2009 because of this.

But Wendy's also shares some rather interesting history with other restaurants, the first being KFC.

Does that man next to the Colonel look familiar to you? He should. I just showed you a picture of him earlier. That's Dave Thomas and yeah...he not only knew the Colonel, he worked for him too!

Back in the day an Indiana chain of KFC's were doing poorly. Colonel Sanders offered Thomas (who was already working for KFC at the time) the opportunity to go up there and get the restaurants back to making a profit. If he was successful, he would own 45% of the stores up there.

Dave not only turned it around he also invented the "Bucket" sign for KFC and re-sold the stores back to the Colonel for 1.5 Million.Thomas promptly went back to Ohio and with his money from the Colonel, opened up the first Wendy's location.

Amazing, right? But that's not all! Guess who owns Wendy's now?

Ha!! I'm not lying! Wild huh? Oh and a little tid bit about Arbys...it was started by the Raffel Brothers, who got the name for the store by taking the initials "R" and "B" to form the company's name.

It's a small fast food world after all!