Maybe they shouldn’t have started price gouging to such a ridiculous degree.
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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If Dave Thomas was still alive he would shut down all Wendy’s.
Cheap - Fast - Good
You only have to pick 2 to be successful as a fast food joint and they picked none.
Have they thought about not charging exorbitant prices on their food? I mean, a salad shouldn't cost ten bucks. Especially when they halved the god damn thing out of nowhere and pretended like they didn't. As one of the three people who enjoyed Wendy's salads, I fucking saw what you did.
The problem is not fast food prices, the problem is stagnated wages.
Oligarchs. Guillotines. That's the solution.
How did stagnated wages hurt their sales?
I'm not sure where the question is coming from, but stagnated wages means that as prices rise due to inflation, people make the same wage and their spending power goes down. And when their spending power goes down, they have to spend more on necessities like rent/mortgate, transportation, groceries. It leaves less disposable income for things like fast food, entertainment, et cetera.
Oh I thought you were saying that's why Wendy's was going out of business, because they didn't pay their workers enough.
Have they thought about not charging exorbitant prices on their food?
I'm sure they have. But when rental prices are skyrocketing and margins on meals are collapsing, there's not a ton of wiggle room. One of the smart long-term moves that McDonalds made - way back in the 1980s - was to make sure they owned the real estate under all of their corporately owned restaurants. This was an expensive move up-front, but it paid enormous dividends long term.
Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell & KFC, etc - they're all largely operating out of a retail rental market that's consolidated into a handful of mega-REITs. And as those REITs demand steadily increasing ROI, the cost of operating storefronts has driven quite a few of these storefronts out of business.
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Another US company going under?
Oh noes.
Oh well.
Next.
I wonder if they ever tried, ya know...making their food taste good?
They tried raising prices, they tried shrinkflation, they tried paying their employees as little as legally possible, they tried lowering staffing levels to the least number of employees humanly possible, they even floated the idea of surge pricing in fast food...but the whole time I've known Wendy's to exist, at least in my area, the burgers have been bland and the fries have been soggy and tasteless. And I'm old enough to remember Wendy's having a bland salad bar to go with the rest of their bland food.
i call it cheapflation.
I would settle for cheap again. I used to always have a go to wendy's meal that was a small chilli, 2 spicy chicken snack wraps and a Jr bacon cheese burger with a small drink (you put the chilli in the wraps and burgers). Since it was all off the cheap menu it used to be well under $10, then it was $15, then $17 and the last time I was there it was just over $20, that is just not a thing anyone can look at and think worthwhile.
Maybe nobody wants a $10 fast food burger
Good riddance. I haven't given them a dime since their new CEO tried to make his mark at the company by introducing ~~dynamic pricing~~ price gouging.
Apparently that POS left Wendy's in July 2025 and now works at The Hershey Company, but the damage is done. I'm never going back. There are better local burger joints around here anyway.
And before that, PepsiCo, so if "CEO" wasn't enough indicator that he was a complete ghoul.
Yeah Pepsico 2019-2024... And Pepsi is still operating in Russia today unlike competitors that left because of the invasion of Ukraine.
Guy is a complete piece of shit and regularly makes the shittiest decisions. At this point it seems like he's one of those CEOs the Board hires to implement the shit they want but don't want to take the flak for.
Has Hershey's made any changes like that yet? If not, it's probably around the corner.
The chocolate business is struggling, due to high tariffs. I'm sure it's a daily issue at Hershey's right now.
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Sir, this isn't a Wendy's anymore.
Sir, this was a Wendy's
20 years from now:
“What’s a Wendy’s?”
Why did Wendy leave? The bacon ate her.
I was eating something I made at home for lunch today and pondering how much it cost me for what was a good, hearty, healthy meal. Even eating in generous proportions, I was eating for about $2 a meal. I had carbs, fats, protein, fiber, and various minerals as well vitamins. I don't think I could get a single cheeseburger from Wendy's for that price. Even their cheap ones. As well it's not just them, it's all fast food. They forgot the idea is you go there, spend like $5 for a meal that you don't have to make at home. Giving some variety.
making it yourself is much cheaper, fast food and restuarants are quite expensive. if one were to eat out everyday, it would be like 50-100$/day easily this is an extreme example, due to enabling partners, thinking they have infinite amount of money i know people that spends beyond thier means and the wife is always doing this.
Just raise your prices more, I'm sure that'll help!
Honestly, the ridiculous prices of fast food has been the best thing for my health. I never ate it a lot, but I would sometimes grab something if I didn't have time to cook or make something at home, now that's totally off the table, if I wanted to spend $45 for burgers for two people I would take us to an actual local restaurant and get higher quality food that supports a local economy.
I haven't touched fast-food since before covid.
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I literally stopped going there after spending $15 and still being hungry.
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Wendy's deserves to go under.
Few other places have hyper-inflated their prices to not pay their employees more nor improve their food quality quite like Wendy's has.
Culver's and maybe some local joints are some of the very last places its worth buying a burger from. Might as well solely make them at home for now on.
I worked at Culver’s when I was younger, so when I make burgers at home they essentially ARE Culver’s burgers. Right down to the seasoning.
But I do still love me some Culver’s. I can’t easily do custard or fried cheese curds at home.
The only thing I’ll miss from Wendy’s is dipping their fries in the frosties.
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I'm eating out a lot less, these days. I used to head out for the day with the idea of grabbing lunch first, but now I usually eat lunch at home first. At the price of eating out, with the quality of fast food slipping so badly at the same time, it's cheaper and far more satisfying to eat at home anyway. I found myself eating some poor approximation of food, and wishing I had just made a sandwich at home, so that's what I started doing.
Wendy's has always my favorite burger joint, after Culver's, so my change in eating habits is directly contributing to their downfall.
The other lesson here is that if Wendy's is slipping this badly, so are all the others.
AND finally, this: If they are slipping so badly, and much of it due to rising labor costs, this will motivate them to start automating their fast food operations. Every fast food company has been researching robotic preparation, and they could easily implement it tomorrow. The only reason they haven't is because there will be a huge outcry when the first one does it. After that, they fall like dominos, and with a few years after the first one, ALL fast food restaurants will be mostly automated, and MILLIONS of fast food workers will lose their jobs. It is inevitable.
Not Wendy's, but 3medium whoppers at burgerking costs more than 3 family sized entrays, crab ragoons, and eggrolls at my Thai place. Bk is a single sitting, the Thai place is 3 meals worth of food for the family and cooked by a sweet old lady that lives in my neighbourhood. Why would I ever eat corpo trash if it's not cheap, fast, or easy to get?
As for Wendy's, they dug their grave when they mentioned surge pricing. I'm just pissed that it took them this long to lay down in it.
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AND finally, this: If they are slipping so badly, and much of it due to rising labor costs, this will motivate them to start automating their fast food operations. Every fast food company has been researching robotic preparation, and they could easily implement it tomorrow. The only reason they haven’t is because there will be a huge outcry when the first one does it. After that, they fall like dominos, and with a few years after the first one, ALL fast food restaurants will be mostly automated, and MILLIONS of fast food workers will lose their jobs. It is inevitable.
And the price will stay the same or go higher allowing corporations to fatten their bottom line.
Absolutely. Just like these tariffs. When the tariffs are eventually removed, will we see lower prices in the retail stores? Here and there, maybe, but generally, this will be the new price baseline. And the saving from the tariffs will just go to the corporate profits, not to lower prices, or even higher wages, just bigger executive bonuses.
They aren't closing due to rising labor costs. If anything, the US gov is making sure the hourly rates don't move with inflation. Didn't we hear lately of a state that actually LOWERED the minimum wage for teenagers ?
"you'll continue to see hamburger innovation as we move throughout the year," Cook said.
Everyone eating real food elsewhere due to a lack of "hamburger innovation" at Wendy's, raise your hand. Thought so.
The last thing I want in my cheeseburger is "hamburger innovation". The defining selling point of a burger is its elegant simplicity
"Sir, this is..n't a Wendy's anymore. Hasn't been for, oh i don't know, years by now. Closed sometime during the Tramp Presidency mess."
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Where I live, actual home-style cooking at roadside eateries is cheaper.
They forgot to put THE HAMBURGER PATTY on my burger about 8 years ago. I've never given them money since.
Hope they go out of business with their $10 burgers and soggy version 2.1 fries.
Too bad because it was great food in the 80s and 90s. Started to slip around 2010. Got pretty bad around 2015.
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I still don't get why I don't see anything but wendys in news articles. Its actually one of the better ones overall. Why not bk or mcdonalds or kfc?
BK has already plunged into bankruptcy.
Yum! Brands (the owner of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut) is currently $4B delinquent on taxes.
McDonalds has largely beaten out the competition.
Wendy's is just the next franchise that mass media is clustering around (possibly because the number of media outlets is consolidating, causing everyone to echo one another).
I knew it, Demolition Man didn't predict the future correctly at all. There's no way Taco Bell would win the franchise wars, not with the global McDonald's presence
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