The Square Deal

Ever wonder why a Wendy’s® hamburger is square? Our founder Dave Thomas started Wendy’s in 1969 in Columbus, Ohio with a simple idea. Great food, served hot and fresh, by nice people. And the square thing? That came from his childhood role model, Grandma Minnie, who told him to Never Cut Corners. Dave didn’t have the easiest childhood. He was adopted as a baby and then his adoptive mother died when he was very young. His father remarried three times and often struggled to find a job so the family moved around frequently. Dave found solace and community in restaurants – he recalled being eight years old when he first dreamed of starting a restaurant where “everyone would love my food.” Today, we remain committed to his ideals like Quality is our Recipe® (and we still don’t cut corners), and Do the Right Thing. With his childhood as our example, our signature cause is foster care adoption and finding homes for the hundreds of thousands of children who are waiting in foster care to find their forever families. Interested in hearing more? We’ll use this space to give you The Square Deal™ – our views on food, quality, culture, children’s issues and doing our best to make Dave proud.

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Videos from this campaign

Content from this campaign

Responsible Business & Employee Engagement

When the Easy Answer Isn't the Right One...
When you have a job like mine, you get used to seeing your company’s name in the news a lot. Usually it’s good news. Sometimes it’s not. Right now Wendy’s is the target of a campaign led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an activist group that represents tomato harvesters in the Immokalee region of Florida. Their signature program is called the Fair Food Program and for several years, they have pressured Wendy’s to sign the Fair Food Agreement and join their program.

Health & Healthcare

In the Wendy’s Kitchen, with Jenna and Eryn
Recently, our culinary team at Wendy’s recognized an opportunity to lower the amount of sodium contained in our grilled chicken and salads. Sodium is a topic we care about and we strive to be a place that provides options for all, and specifically (in this case) for those who are looking for a few items with lower sodium counts. We’re on a journey and proud of the progress we’ve made, so we’re using this blog to explain a bit about how we approached this challenge…you know, to make “fast food” better for you, without sacrificing quality and taste.

Health & Healthcare

Eating, Living and Working in a Fast Food World
How many times have you rolled out of bed in the morning and said to yourself…you know what, today I’m going to eat incredibly healthy – I’ll do the no-fat, low-cal, no-sodium, only-clean, raw-food, all-protein, no-wine, cleanse-thing. And then 9 AM hits. You walk into your office and right there, starting back at you, are the most gorgeous-looking doughnuts.

Awards, Ratings & Rankings

We’re in Great Company with Adoption-Friendly Workplaces
I’ve written here before about Wendy’s long-time commitment to foster care adoption. It’s a passion that flows throughout our system of restaurants around the world, and a cause we work to elevate in the minds of the public every chance we get. With more than 6,000 restaurants in North America alone, we touch millions of customers every day with the message from our founder Dave Thomas: Unadoptable is Unacceptable.

Responsible Production & Consumption

What It Takes to Be a Wendy’s Supply Partner
At Wendy’s and QSCC, we talk a lot about dedication to quality and doing the right thing. And that goes beyond the walls of One Dave Thomas Boulevard in Dublin, Ohio and into every corner of our business: from the team members in Wendy’s restaurants to the interactions within our communities and ultimately it extends to our supply chain. For us, if you’re going to talk about a dedication to quality, it has to start in the field where the ingredients are grown and distributed throughout the whole of the business.

Responsible Production & Consumption

Serving and Sourcing Fresh Food
At Wendy’s, quality and food safety go hand-in-hand as our first priority when it comes to serving customers in our restaurants. Seems like an obvious priority for a restaurant company, right? Well, in our case, we have an added layer of complexity because we bring in FRESH ingredients to our restaurants – multiple times a week – to craft the items on our menu. And we’ve been doing this ever since we first opened our doors in 1969.

Energy

How a Wendy’s in Mobile, Alabama Became the Most Energy-Efficient Wendy’s in the World
At Wendy’s, we understand that energy conservation in our industry is a big responsibility. It’s a long-term commitment and full of complex (and often expensive) changes that aren’t going to happen overnight. I’m lucky to work with a first class energy team that’s fast at work to improve energy efficiency at Wendy’s.

Diversity & Inclusion

Celebrating the Accomplishments of Wendy’s Top General Managers
In August, we held our first-ever Top General Manager (GM) conference at our Restaurant Support Center in Dublin, Ohio which (as the name suggests) served to honor our top 200 GMs from across company and franchisee restaurants. In the following guest blog, Chief People Officer Scott Weisberg reflects on the three-day celebration and shares a little insight into how much we value the role of the GM.

Philanthropy & Cause Initiatives

Why I Love the Wendy’s High School Heisman Program
A few months ago, I wrote a blog post on National Student Athlete Day in order to set some context about how Wendy’s High School Heisman got its start; I shared that Dave Thomas started the program back in 1994 because he wanted to honor high school student-athletes who were “doing the right thing” – getting an education, serving as a role model and leader, and earning high academic marks.

Philanthropy & Cause Initiatives

How Winning the Wendy's High School Heisman Changed My Life
Olympian Megan O'Leary recounts her experience winning the Wendy's High School Heisman and how it helped her achieve her goals.

More from The Wendy's Company

  1. The Square Deal
    Ever wonder why a Wendy’s® hamburger is square? Our founder Dave Thomas started Wendy’s in 1969 in Columbus, Ohio with a simple idea. Great food...