Wendy's: Just Don't Bother

I guess someone has to be at the bottom of the fast food chains and in my opinion it is Wendy's. I usually do not do fast food anyway, but in my experience Wendy's has been the worst of the worst.

Against the advice of nearly everyone, I use the drive-thru for fast food. Wendy's is the worst I have experienced of all the chains I have tried. My first experience with this nightmare drive-thru was over a year ago. I am a fan of bacon cheeseburgers and Wendy's has them so I had that and fries. Both were cold, but I ate them anyway. I was sick for three days and reported them to the Health Department. I figured after that they might have gotten their act together. This was not the case.

Over a year goes by and I try their new 4 Alarm Chicken Sandwich which will alarm nobody. The chicken was hot as well as the fries. Perhaps they learned their lesson? I don't think so.

Today's drive-thru experience was a classic. I went at prime time, right about noon when I figured everything would be hot and fresh. No way. The first foul-up was the speaker system itself...two tin cans on a string would have been better. About all I could get out of this communication with this teenager was she had orders to axe or age me, I could not figure out which. She did not axe me but certainly aged me

Finally the order did come through, something called a Double Swiss Cheese Melt With Bacon and fries along with a huge soda I did not order. The soda was icy cold, but so were the sandwich and fries.

Perhaps Wendy's should advertise what they actually offer...cold food served with cold communication served quickly.

You must be a glutton for punishment.

I think it must depend on the franchise owner. Around my area, Wendy's is consistently good...well, good for what it is. I wouldn't dare go to one out your way though!

I'll second what Tony said. While I don't have any Wendy's near where I live, there are probably 10 or so in the New York metro area that I patronize from time to time, either when out shopping or visiting friends/relatives. I always go inside, and always buy off the value menu. Most of these franchisees will honor the 99 cent price for the junior bacon cheeseburger.

I can't remember the last time I got a bad burger from a Wendy's.

In the news today is that Wendys is up for sale. I think they died when Dave did.

Wendy's is the only one of the big burger chains I'll patronize. I like the service, the burgers, and the salads.

In one of Calvin Trillin's food pieces, he remembers his daughter saying that as burger joints go, Wendy's isn't as junky as the others.

I like Wendy's burgers, salads, and chili.

John

Hello All,
I'll go Wendy's for chili and fries. It is about a mile away from my job
and 5 stop lights that always seem to catch me on red.
The chili is always still warm, but the fries temperature varies.
My advice would be check the temp of your food when they hand it to you.
If it is cold or lukewarm then, tell them you would like hot food or your
money back.
We have two Wendy's in my town, and the quality is like night and day.
I won't visit one because I've noticed a difference in the quality of the
food and nature of their service.
Take Care,
Fieldthistle

quote:

Originally posted by kland01s

In the news today is that Wendys is up for sale. I think they died when Dave did.

No kland01s. IMO the fate of Wendy's was ultimately sealed beginning around 1985 when three things happened. Further changes after that time only made things worse. True, they were going down hill way before that, though. The Wendy's in my area since that time for the most part have been gasping for breath. QSC, no more. Nationwide, they are trying to improve things, finally. Too little; too late.

Never had any problems at the Wendy's in Universal City by me.The drive through there is quick,and food is always hot.The one on Loop1604 and nacodoches,well the foods okay,but service inside is slow.The one in The Forum at Olympia Hills,in Live Oak,Tx by me has a pretty good drive through and the food is hot.
Just depends on the employees and more important the manager in charge.

Against my better judgement, I went to another fast food place today to see if they were all equally bad.

This time it was Burger King. Again it was the drive-thru and I was experiencing Deja Vu. The same horrible communication system which reminds me of 1920's crystal radio technology and an employee that reminded me eerily of yesterdays nightmare Wendy's employee. A chill went up my spine.

Anyway, I ordered some sort of fancy Angus Burger special with bacon and cheese, fries and cola. I do believe both places are afraid of customer retribution as they both asked if I was large. Finally, I got my order from an older clone of the teenager from Wendy's. I asked if she had a daughter that worked at Wendy's. She asked how I knew and I lied, telling her I worked for the psychic hotline.

Although the drive-thru experience was about the same, the food was appreciably better. The sandwich was acceptable with above average meat taste probably due to the "flame broiling" method. It could have benefited from more bacon as could have Wendy's.

The fries were great, hot, crispy on the outside with just the right amount of creamy potato texture on the inside. The huge thing of cola went to waste as I only drank about six ounces of it and threw the rest away.

I don't think I will ever visit Wendy's again but I do think I might try Burger King again if only for the fries.

Greyghost

I just had one of those cheesy angus burgers too, I was impressed for a FF place, yes the fries were greasy and cold and the diet coke tasted of every flavor of fountain drink they had mixed in, but the burger was really good!!!!

I like our Wendy's they let me customize my own burger.

I get 2 1/4 patties pepper cheese on each burger, bacon, lettuce and mayo on the frescata bread.

OH MY GOD does that make a tasty burger!

I can only get this creation after dinner rush when A friend of mine is on duty though

but yes Wendy's has been going down hill.

"I do believe both places are afraid of customer retribution as they both asked if I was large. "

More likely they were asking if you wanted to upgrade to a large order.

John

I know that, John. Sometimes I try to spike my posts with an attempt at humor. I suppose my real complaint is neither place explains what is supposed to be large. Is it the burger, the fries, the soda or all? They just bark out, large?

I am not kidding about the feeble squawk boxes they use for drive-thru communication though. I can see where it was easy for some radio hackers to have fun with these systems a few years ago. They drove the fast food places nuts. In case you missed the news then, here is what they did. They would wait for someone to order a large meal then override the response telling the customer they were way too fat to order that meal. Other abuses were heaped on the customer as well. The hackers were never caught as I recall.

The command of English of the people manning these squawk boxes is no joke either. They use a dialect I am unfamiliar with. It could be Gullah, Highland Scots, a combination of both or just about anything. Perhaps they are hiring aliens and by this I do not mean people from other nations, I mean space aliens. Perfect positioning for the first wave of the invasion, take over the fast food places and the rest of the world falls.

Excuse me, I was going to write more, but I have to make an emergency call to Art Bell.

See my post about customer service.

I was at the local grocery store today returning bottles and cans and 4 of the machines were down (out of 8). Kid comes in, looks at the machines. Comes back 15 minutes later, empties one machine. With his hands empty, he walks out again. Comes back 15 minutes later and does another machine. All the time dragging his feet.

Where does the surprise part come in with regard to a lack of customer service in stores?

quote:

Originally posted by Greyghost

I know that, John. Sometimes I try to spike my posts with an attempt at humor. I suppose my real complaint is neither place explains what is supposed to be large. Is it the burger, the fries, the soda or all? They just bark out, large?

I am not kidding about the feeble squawk boxes they use for drive-thru communication though. I can see where it was easy for some radio hackers to have fun with these systems a few years ago. They drove the fast food places nuts. In case you missed the news then, here is what they did. They would wait for someone to order a large meal then override the response telling the customer they were way too fat to order that meal. Other abuses were heaped on the customer as well. The hackers were never caught as I recall.

The command of English of the people manning these squawk boxes is no joke either. They use a dialect I am unfamiliar with. It could be Gullah, Highland Scots, a combination of both or just about anything. Perhaps they are hiring aliens and by this I do not mean people from other nations, I mean space aliens. Perfect positioning for the first wave of the invasion, take over the fast food places and the rest of the world falls.

Excuse me, I was going to write more, but I have to make an emergency call to Art Bell.

quote:

Originally posted by kland01s

In the news today is that Wendys is up for sale. I think they died when Dave did.

Not quite. Selling is one of the things mentioned as a possibility down the road during the Wendy's stockholder's meeting.

quote:

Originally posted by kland01s

In the news today is that Wendys is up for sale. I think they died when Dave did.

agreed, dave kept up the quality when he was in charge. i know for a fact that the wendy's in my area switched from fresh beef to frozen within a week of his departure.. quality has slid so far that the same beef patties used to make the junior burgers are used for the "premier" burgers as well- thin, dried-out hockey pucks.

the chicken nuggets are still pretty good though.

I must disagree w/ most of the other posters. I get a baked potato (no toppings...w/ no toppings it is great finger food after about an hour) and a salad w/o all the crap that is bad for you. I speed down the road w/ salad under the buckle...I eat it first...and a potato for later.

Freash and pretty good. Not really a baked potato since it is wrapped in foil...makes it a steamed potato in my book.

I really can't stand any fast food burger (with the exception of White Castles which I have every few months). So I enjoy Wendy's when I'm done with my weekend shopping, but still have to do my grocery shopping and I'm hungry. I'll get their Chili and a baked potato. That will tide me over til I get my grocery shopping done and my insides don't feel like crap afterwards. Now, I can't say that for the White Castles, which I eat with onion chips. But for some reason I have to do it every three months.

Dave must be turning in his grave. This chain used to be very good. They need to go back to the basics. The new menu items are really bad. If I go I just stick to the few things that are still ok, the burgers although not as good as they used to be, the chili, and the frostys.

Wendy's is the only franchise I have ever boycotted. In fact twice, each time for several years.

Similar to the opening post, the drive-thru at Wendy's is like no other experience I've ever had. In more than 20 years I have tried every conceivable method to discourage Wendy's from putting cheese on my singles. No chance. I despise cheese on burgers and Wendy's plants it there almost every time. My last attempt was a multiple use of this phrase, "My top priority is no cheese." I would repeat it at the drive-thru box and pay window. A couple of times the person at the window sarcastically mocked me for being so paranoid about cheese. Then I would get home and the singles were plastered with hideous cheese. Almost like they were doing it intentionally.

Finally I raised hell by contacting corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ohio with a 4-page letter. I got many responses including from the national and regional offices and the store manager of my closest Wendy's. She fully conceded that it was an ongoing problem. "I have a young staff. I try to tell them not every burger comes with cheese but they don't listen."

And that's been precisely my impression of the situation for more than two decades. Wendy's seems to think it's a pure bonus if they give you cheese if you didn't ask for it.

I have never seen any company as incompetent at Wendy's. Even after making the complaint the same thing happened twice more so finally I gave up. I love Frostys but no way I'm subjecting myself to what goes along with that. The very thought of Wendy's makes my blood boil.

How could you get 4 pages out of "I don't want cheese on my burger and I keep getting it, how can we solve this?".

quote:

Originally posted by enginecapt

How could you get 4 pages out of "I don't want cheese on my burger and I keep getting it, how can we solve this?".

Large font? Extra space between lines?

One of my kids doesn't like cheese, so when they twist my arm to take them to Wendy's one gets a cheeseburger, the other no cheese. Never once had an issue.

Wendy's has slipped, along with the rest. They used to be the better-quality, better service burger chain. Anyone else remember when they did not have wastebaskets in the open dining room and employees bussed the tables? And during rush hours they had someone in the line taking your order and shuttling it to the back so your order would be ready when you got to the counter. If you said no tomato, you didn't get tomato.

That said, I was stuck the other day and went to Wendy's. I don't know if it's part of their new "hot and juicy burger" campaign, or just timing, but the bacon deluxe whatever was actually much better than I've had in a few years. It was hot, it was even slightly pink on the inside but still had the grill flavor, and it tasted like beef. Could they be trying to improve?

BTW - IMHO anyone who uses a drive-thru deserves whatever they get.

in my humble opinion, Taco Bell is the worst of the fast food drive throughs. I have never ever gotten anything from there and have it be right. No matter if its 12 noon or 2 am, they manage to screw it up. How on earth can you screw taco bell up? its a friggin burrito, with things being shot out of shiny metal tubes, its BRAINLESS.

This has been an ongoing situation for two decades. I finally wrote one letter. In two decades of problems that equated to dozens of varied and specific examples, and I provided them along with suggestions.

And the company responded by thanking me for the letter and specifics. That's why I received letters and phone calls from three sources. Newsflash: companies ignore emails. They'll pay more attention to snail mail especially if it's detailed and relevant. The store manager said the regional manager had forwarded my letter to all the local Wendy's.

Hmmm. Let's see, what would the response have been if I had written the suggested letter, the one with a dozen words? LOL.

quote:

Originally posted by Ashphalt

Wendy's has slipped, along with the rest. They used to be the better-quality, better service burger chain. Anyone else remember when they did not have wastebaskets in the open dining room and employees bussed the tables? And during rush hours they had someone in the line taking your order and shuttling it to the back so your order would be ready when you got to the counter. If you said no tomato, you didn't get tomato.

That said, I was stuck the other day and went to Wendy's. I don't know if it's part of their new "hot and juicy burger" campaign, or just timing, but the bacon deluxe whatever was actually much better than I've had in a few years. It was hot, it was even slightly pink on the inside but still had the grill flavor, and it tasted like beef. Could they be trying to improve?

BTW - IMHO anyone who uses a drive-thru deserves whatever they get.

I certainly hope so. Wendy's use to be my FF place of choice. Their burgers were very good. Times have changed and I hope they are beginning to do so.

I use to enjoy their salad bar and now it is gone.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

What heightened my ferocity and prompted the letter was the example immediately prior. I went just before the drive-thru closed and ordered for several people including myself. The guy at the drive-thru not only mocked me when I repeated the, "My top priority is no cheese," line, but he also asked me to pull forward and park, since there were cars behind me and I had made a large order that would take time.

That wasn't the first time that happened at Wendy's. It is an annoyance, to say the least.

I turned on the radio and looked at the clock. It took 8 minutes for the food to be delivered. Recently I had been checking the contents to make sure cheese was absent. But with such a large order and the assurance I had been given about no cheese, I drove home without looking. By the time I opened the bag, it was too late to return before the drive-thru closed. I gave my burgers to friends who laughed about it happening again. They all know my history with Wendy's and many have witnessed it. Once last year three of us headed to the golf course. We stopped at a drive-thru and ordered 3 singles to hold us over before the round, one apiece. My exact words were, "Three singles, that's it." And the woman at the drive-thru replied, "Okay, I've got three singles with cheese." My friends in the car erupted with laughter and I immediately drove off the property shaking my head. I had never threatened to say the word cheese yet she invented it. That's typical of my experiences with Wendy's.

Anyway, I called the Wendy's that night when my order was botched. The guy remembered my line and genuinely apologized. But at that point I decided it was finally time to contact national headquarters. I no doubt would have done it sooner other than staying away from the chain for 5 or 7 years at one point.

My first response was from someone at national headquarters in Dublin, Ohio. She sent an email and said they had heard complaints about this before, unwanted cheese. But she said no one had been as forceful as myself. She said the letter would be forwarded to regional headquarters.

My contact from that guy was very formal. It was a call that initially was used to verify everything I wrote in the letter. He went through it point by point. Some of it was the problem about pulling forward and parking. It was the second time they had screwed up my order even after asking me to wait and pull into a parking place. The guy said it was company policy, depending on the projected wait and whether anyone was in line, but individual stores could interpret and apply it differently. At the end he said he had forwarded the letter to Wendy's here in Las Vegas. I assumed he meant the closest one, where I have had many but not all of the problems.

Not until I heard from the woman who managed that Wendy's did I realize the regional guy apparently forwarded copies of the letter throughout this area. She told me she had posted it page by page on the wall inside the work area and asked her employees to read it. Frankly, she was too frantic and apologetic, saying she wanted to make it good, etc. That was a constant theme. I kept emphasizing I didn't want freebies, just to avoid the cheese. We talked about drive-thru strategy. Some have told me never to use the word cheese at a drive-thru. The boxes are so pathetic if you say "no cheese" it garbles and all they hear is the word cheese. My brother-in-law formerly managed a fast food place and he agreed with that strategy, laughing at how bad the drive-thru boxes were. But that strategy finally flopped and I resorted to the "top priority" experiment.

This is what baffles me: I've never had the problem elsewhere. Jack in the Box once gave me someone else's order and it included cheeseburgers, but it wasn't intended for me. My fury against Wendy's is due to continuing problems with the identical situation. Several times I've gone inside and mentioned this to the manager or assistant manager of the specific store, but no one seemed to care until I wrote the long letter. Maybe it cut down on the situation overall, even if it eventually failed in regard to me and now I'm avoiding Wendy's completely again.

BTW, I'm hardly the only one who has had this problem. In a Gilley's here at the Frontier Hotel last year the subject of Wendy's somehow came up. I laughed and mentioned my cheese woes. The incredibly shapely Gilley's waitress in the little western outfit came over and put her arm around me. "Forget about it, honey. Wendy's puts cheese on burgers whether you want it or not." True story.

Awsi Dooger,

Don't let the detractors get you down. You are right in expecting to get what you order and have paid for.

A four page letter? No problem there, you have proven right in this thread that you are a very good writer that pays attention to detail and is not unnecessarily verbose.

By the way, welcome to Roadfood, as you have very few posts. I am looking forward to more.

I used to work at the Wendy's drive thru. Drive back around after checking your sandwich & make them make you another one. I understand this isn't always an option, like you said the one time you had friends in the car, etc. But when I worked there our customers had absolutely no problem coming back & telling us when we did something wrong.

One time I was making sandwiches for the drive thru & made them according to what I heard the customer say, not what the 17 year old bimbo assistant manager on a power trip at the register rang up. She pointed at the screen like I was a moron. I told her, 'I made what the I heard the customer order, not what you typed.' She made me make the woman a cheeseburger anyway. Sure as sugar, the woman came back & said, "I ordered a chicken sandwich, not a cheeseburger." I didn't say a word.

For those who want hot fries, our customers also had no problem ordering their fries with "no salt", which meant you had to put fresh fries down & not salt them, holding up both the drive thru & the line inside the store. They also had no problem salting the "no salt" fries right in front of us.

At another burger place I worked at, the customers also had no problem coming right up to the counter & saying, "You f'ed up my burger. I'm going to stand here until you make me what I ordered."

I admire your tenacity & good luck with the no-cheese on a burger @ Wendy's. I read Dave's book, and his personal favorite was a single with mustard, pickle & onion.

No one has mentioned the Wendy's Bonus Bag, so I will. When you go through the drive thru late at night, say right before closing, and they need to get rid of fries, sometimes they will sneak them in your bag when you didn't order any. Yes, they are cold, but a few minutes in the toaster oven once you get home fixes that. We used to do that to people when I worked there & forgot all about it until it was done to me recently.