If you’re from my generation, you probably remember the Wendy’s commercials featuring Dave Thomas. He seemed like a nice gentleman that really cared about his restaurants.
That was about all of my knowledge concerning Wendy’s until I came across Dave’s autobiography recently. I didn’t have expectations going into the read, but it turned out to be wonderful.
One of the interesting things about the book was learning about the fast rise of Wendy’s. The first restaurant launched in 1969. By 1976, the company opened its 500th restaurant. Now, that was mostly due to franchising, but still… Then by 1978, the company opened its 1,000th restaurant.
So in less than 10 years the upstart already had 1,000 restaurants open and was on its way to many more in the coming decades.
From a general point of view this would seem like an overnight success. Here is Dave Thomas, a regular guy, fulfilling his dream to open his own restaurant and within a few years he’s on his way to huge success and scale.
But as with most overnight success stories, there is more than meets the eye…
Starting Anew In Your Late 30s
Dave Thomas was 37 years old when he launched the first Wendy’s restaurant. On top of that, he had five children and a wife to support. The family was doing pretty well financially before Dave started Wendy’s, but that even added to the pressure to make the restaurant a success.
Also, Dave knew that starting a new business would put immense strain on the family. He would be required to put just about all of his energy into the business to see it through to success. In success, failure and anything in between, he knew that he would need to be away from his family.
But he had the support of his wife. It seems his kids understood that this was his dream. So he went for it.
20+ Years Of Restaurant Experience
So Dave Thomas started Wendy’s when he was 37 years old. What had he been doing prior to that?
It turns out, Dave had been in the restaurant business for 20+ years. In fact, Dave dropped out of school when he was just 15 years old so he could work full time at a restaurant.
It’s not that Dave was a poor student. It seems that he was pretty smart and did alright in school. He just seemed to know from an early age that he wanted to open his own restaurant someday. And knowing that, he figured after a basic education that the best place to learn the industry was actually working in the industry.
He also did a stint in the military where he worked in the food area and learned even more about feeding large amounts of people. He learned about procurement and all kinds of things there and took those lessons with him when he left and went back to working in restaurants.
The Colonel
When Dave was in his twenties he was working for a successful restauranteur. At the time, a gentlemen was franchising his fried chicken. He was preparing the chicken in a unique way and any restaurant could franchise this process and sell the chicken in their restaurants.
Dave came around to the idea and eventually saw potential. Through his contacts he was given the opportunity to manage restaurants that weren’t doing well. He turned them partially by branding them after the chicken…Kentucky Fried Chicken.
As part of the deal for taking over management of the failing restaurants, Dave was able to buy into minority ownership of those restaurants. When he was in his 30s, the majority owner and Dave decided to sell.
Dave netted over a million dollars from that sale. I believe the restaurants were sold back to KFC corporate.
Final Thoughts
Dave worked for another restaurant company for a few years. Then he finally got around to launching his “own” restaurant with that first Wendy’s. And that is what it was…just one location. He had a dream to franchise it, but he wanted to test his ideas with one, then two and I believe six before they started franchising.
Wendy’s was an overnight success to many outsiders. But to those that knew Dave Thomas’ background, they could see that it was truly a lifetime’s worth of work that went into the effort.