Everyone at work was quite nice during my period of mourning today…
Folksy marketing aside, you have to respect someone who manged actually to build a fast food empire based as much on quality as on quantity. Wendy’s made its debut in the late 1960s, when the American fast food market was already saturated (pardon the pun); no one expected it to succeed. But an alternative to the miserable fare at other fast food chains proved very successful indeed…
And you also have to respect Dave Thomas for being considerably less of a horse’s ass than Ray Kroc (of McDonald’s) and for running a much tighter operation than any of the assorted half-assed custodians of Burger King…
Dave’s focus was always on the quality of operations, and as a somewhat avid reader of corporate and retail histories, his is the kind of story always I find most interesting. These are stories of actual individuals with visions that also just happened to be profitable. Unlike a Bill Gates, who largely succeeded through a series of coincidences and the exercise of questionable ethics, Dave Thomas was the sort who succeeded through actual innovation. You have to respect that too…
Now give me a #2 no pickle, please…