Wendy's Sick!

Wendy's to do a papercut. They are closing between 300 and 500 stores.

While everyone on the far right and center are crying about a democratic socialist winning the New York City mayoral election, the results of capitalism continue to shows us why Americans are getting tired of the status quo.

Wednesday Addams Meals, Loaded Baconators, Eggnators, Oreo Frostys, Pop Tart Frostys, SpongeBob SquarePants Pineapple Frostys, Takis Spicy Nuggets and Junior Bacons are not keeping the second largest fast company from closing underperformed stores.

Private equity firms are fucking up the country right now. There is no legislation on the records to keep these entities from operating solely for piling debt on long established companies and forcing them out of business.

Wendy's, based out of Dublin, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus has announced they will close up to 300 locations in the United States and Canada. They have not decided on which locations, but company owned are first before the franchises. Once the contract with the franchisee is up, then Wendy's will close it.

Dayton, Ohio has 25 locations to my knowledge. It is unknown which location could be affected. But in areas where blight, low traffic, crappy service and weak resources leads to the closing, I know five locations are in the bubble of closing. Dayton had closed three locations in the area.

Where's the beef?

Wendy's blames tariffs, food insecurity and inflation.

Interim CEO Ken Cook told investors in a Friday, Nov. 7, quarterly earnings call that the company would be closing a “mid single-digit percentage” of locations. With around 6,000 locations still operating nationwide, this would amount to roughly 240 to 360 stores. One investor estimated the number at about 300 locations during the call. "When we look at the system today, we have some restaurants that do not elevate the brand and are a drag from a franchisee financial performance perspective," said Cook. "The goal is to address and fix those restaurants."

The goal is to create a problem by making more problems. Putting people out of work or forcing them to travel to other locations which put some in predicaments is what they are doing.

How about bringing back the quality of the food?

When you seen the menu, you see an image of a Wendy's Dave Classic looking marvelous.

Make the food affordable, make it look like the photos on the menu and bring back the family element.

When you get home, open up the bag, unwrap the foil, you see a sloppy mess on a bun.

When you raise the prices of Dave's single, double and triple from $6 to $14, you are turning away penny pinching foodies. When you raise the prices of chicken sandwiches and fish sandwiches from $5 to $14, well....

When you do away with the Biggie menu, the Value menu and incorporating profits over quality, you get people feeling like they are missing the days when Dave Thomas ran it.

Dave was a man of the people. He warned executives that if you are disconnected from the customer, you are not connected with the brand. It almost makes me wish Melinda Thomas-Moore (aka Miss Wendy) took back the company and force all the people out.

She knew her father's philosophy and how to make Wendy's a brand.

Cook wants to put restaurants on notice. If they fail at making a mark, they're closing it.

In some cases, that will mean making improvements to technology or equipment or transferring struggling locations to new operators. In others, he said, it will mean closing the restaurants altogether.

The closures are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of this year, Cook said. A list of exact locations slated for closure has not been announced.

Wendy's has struggled with sales compared to some of its competitors recently, reporting a 4.7% decrease in same-store sales —revenue generated by stores open for at least a year —and a 2.6% loss in global systemwide sales in Q3.

No single private equity firm owns Wendy's; instead, Trian Partners is the largest shareholder, with other institutional investors like BlackRock and Vanguard also holding significant stakes. Trian Partners, founded by Nelson Peltz, has been a major investor in Wendy's for many years and previously explored taking the company private, but it is not the sole owner.