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Right now, as you read this very story, a Wendy’s somewhere is closing. In February, the chain announced that it would shutter at least 300 locations in the first half of 2026 in a ketchup-tinted bloodbath that followed a shocking 11.3 percent drop in same-store sales–the industry’s key measure of year-over-year growth–at the end of last year. Whatever the final death tally, the losses will add up to somewhere around 5 to 6 percent of Wendy’s total store count.

Not all of this is the company’s fault. Other big-name fast-food chains like Pizza Hut and Papa John’s will also be closing hundreds of stores this year, owing to factors like a tough operational environment of higher supply costs, increased competition, and inflation-bitten consumers. It’s also increasingly difficult for any brand to keep anyone’s attention in a manic and incoherent media ecosystem where the aura that a CEO projects while biting into a burger on camera is seemingly more important than the quality of the burger itself. (It’s both telling and psychically unsettling that Wendy’s most noteworthy success in recent years came by way of a Krabby Patty Kollab promotion for the 25th anniversary of SpongeBob SquarePants.)

Still, not all the chains are struggling right now. Through value menu pricing and savvy marketing, McDonald’s and Taco Bell have been cleaning up. Insurgent chains like Raising Cane’s are suddenly everywhere and thriving. Casual chains like Chili’s have convinced consumers that if they’re going to spend $12 on a burger combo, they might as well get utensils and some ambiance with it. And so, on behalf of all its lovelorn fans, I’ve been wondering: Exactly what the fuck happened to Wendy’s?

The answer is … a lot. In January 2024, after a year of flat sales, price hikes, franchisee distress, and flagging stock value, the company named Kirk Tanner as its CEO; at the time, it was considered a surprise hire given that Tanner had spent the previous 30-plus years in consumer-packaged goods at PepsiCo. Tanner quickly distinguished himself within his first month on the job by seeming to suggest that Wendy’s might use A.I. to experiment with surge pricing on its menus. The resulting uproar, which took place in an election year defined by consumer agony over inflation—seemed poised to do more damage to the company than the great human finger chili hoax of 2005. After less than 18 months on the job, Tanner suddenly decamped to Hershey’s last summer, adding to the company upheaval; his interim replacement, the CFO Ken Cook, had only been at Wendy’s for eight months, after spending the previous 20 years at UPS.

Even if you can already spot a problem here, it’s helpful to know what carried Wendy’s through its first 50 years, during which it rose to become America’s second-biggest burger chain by sales. Lost to time is the story of Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas. Remembered best for his avuncular presence in hundreds of Wendy’s television ads, Thomas was also a restaurant operations wizard.

Unlike most modern CEOs, Thomas didn’t have an MBA or even a college degree; he was a high school dropout who only went back to get his GED in his 60s because he was wary of being a bad role model. His practical know-how was from actually working in restaurants for decades, even when he was legally too young to do so. (At 12, he was fired from a job at a Walgreen’s soda fountain when his boss discovered he wasn’t 16.) Thomas’ first major coup was turning around the fortunes of some struggling KFC franchises in Columbus, Ohio, which he did by drastically simplifying the menus, pushing the company to personalize its marketing reach, and making the stores more profitable by focusing on to-go dining. After selling the franchises back to the company, Thomas was a millionaire at age 35, all following an itinerant childhood spent in boarding houses across the Midwest during the Great Depression.

This may all sound like Horatio Alger nonsense, but Thomas’ run as a counter man, cook, server, and manager helped set his blueprint for Wendy’s. In 1969, a year after selling his KFC stores, Thomas bet that, even in a saturated fast-food market, the postwar generations who had come of age with some disposable income would pay a bit more for quality food and a superior experience.

Wendy’s image as “the fancy one” started from the jump with a menu featuring a burger that was bigger than most fast-food burgers at the time—a quarter pounder before the Quarter Pounder—and at 55 cents, significantly more expensive. As you certainly know, Wendy’s burger patties are square, in part because you can cook more of them on the grill that way and also because the beef hangs over a circular bun in a way that projects abundance. (Roll your eyes all you want, but Thomas’ claim that the burger’s shape was inspired by his grandmother’s exhortation to never cut corners is genius.)

Wendy’s make-do, Midwestern brand persona wasn’t an act though. The company’s semi-beloved chili was one of five items on the opening menu because Thomas wanted to make use of leftover fresh beef before it expired. The inspiration for the Frosty came from the concession stands of a Cleveland race track. Thomas understood that his customers wanted speed and competence. The multiple drive-thru windows where you paid after ordering and before you got your food? The winding metal gates that turned Wendy’s dining-room lines into neat snakelike queues? These were Thomas’ sleights of hand because he understood that the longer a customer waited, the more annoyed they got and the less likely they were to come back.

Even if these arcane bits of corporate trivia are completely new to you, if you’ve loved Wendy’s long enough, they probably won’t surprise you. With an endearing sincerity, the company appeared out of step with time, which is why the company’s recent struggles are so frustrating to experience.

Fast-food consumers of a certain age tend to be nostalgic for the old 1990s Wendy’s, with its black-window solariums and yellow packaging and newspaper print tables. But the soft lighting of American life under those charming faux Tiffany lamps is gone. Salad-bar nostalgia aside, a more reasonable hope for Wendy’s future is a return to the more comprehensible version of the company it was just 10 years ago.

The Wendy’s of the post–Great Recession years, while devastatingly fluent in internet speak, was still basically legible to an average consumer. It was a burger chain that would never deign to serve energy drinks or cold brew or hawk a weird 100 Days of Summer value program that you had to track like an astrology planner. Barely a decade ago, Wendy’s didn’t have menu bloat with a dozen types of Frosty flavors, a weird partnership with Cinnabon, and breakfast service. It would have never renamed some of their stores Tendy’s just because they started serving chicken tenders.

To give due credit, most of the new Frosty flavors are absolute stoner manna and the Breakfast Baconator is exactly the type of A.M. day ruiner that Saturday mornings were built for. But even Dave Thomas (especially Dave Thomas!) would tell you that there is a cost—to brand, franchisees, workers, and consumer loyalty—in trying to do too much, in offering too much, in chasing too many trends, in trying to be too much to too many.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Wendy’s still had a relatively uncluttered core menu, a quality spicy chicken sandwich for the bad days, and a “4 for $4” deal that embodied real, accessible, unfussy value. Wendy’s, in other words, used to be simple.

As part of its new efforts to stanch the Frosty bleed, it has already updated its value menu, but value alone can only do so much when you’ve strayed so dramatically from the path. Earlier this month, for example, it launched an upgraded spicy chicken sandwich, which would have made sense during the great chicken sandwich wars of 2019 but doesn’t inspire confidence on a menu that also has chicken nuggets, chicken tenders, three chicken salads, a chicken wrap, and four other chicken sandwiches. That’s what’s so sad about modern Wendy’s. It’s become a symbol of big business gone wrong in part because it once seemed to do it so right.