Quality Food

Our commitment to Quality is real

As a customer who visits a Wendy’s restaurant, you can count on many things: a friendly crew; a bright, relaxed atmosphere; clean tables; and a variety of menu choices. The most important thing our customers can rely on is great-tasting food. They know the hamburgers will be fresh, never frozen; the salads crisp and fresh; and the chili rich and meaty. They expect the Frosty to be cool and creamy; the fries hot and crispy; the chicken tender and flavorful. Our customers know that our ingredients are of the highest quality.

Quality is Our Recipe

Our restaurant signs display this phrase and our commitment to quality extends to all parts of our business.

We’re proud of our line-up of ingredients: sea salt; fresh milk and rich cream; center-cut chicken breasts; in-season strawberries and blueberries right from the fields; hand-picked apples; center-cut, naturally smoked Applewood Bacon; Asiago, Romano and Parmesan cheeses; hand-sliced tomatoes and fresh lettuce; whole fresh potatoes baked in each restaurant and, of course, fresh, never frozen beef.

What that long list means is this: we don’t cut corners. It was one of Wendy’s Founder Dave Thomas’ favorite sayings, and it’s true. We could use bags of shredded lettuce. Instead choose to hand-leaf whole heads of iceberg and romaine lettuce in our restaurants each day.

In an effort to offer freshly prepared and less processed menu items, we work with suppliers who value quality food as much as we do. Our suppliers deliver fresh foods to our restaurants. That freshness is important to us. And it makes a huge difference to our customers.

Freshly Prepared

Our hamburgers are made from fresh, never frozen beef, and served on quality buns from select bakeries. Our hamburgers don’t sit under a warming lamp or on a steam table. They come off the grill onto the bun and into our customer’s hands.

Our salads are prepared fresh each day in our restaurants with 11 types of greens, fresh toppings like red and green apples, natural cheeses - served with all-natural, no-preservative salad dressings.

Our Natural-Cut French fries, seasoned with sea salt, are served hot and crispy from the fryer. The list goes on.

Making sure every customer receives the freshest food is who we are. It’s the way we’ve done it from Day One. And it’s the way we always will.

We Strive to Offer the Best

Our commitment to delivering on the expectation of superior quality is real. We want every single customer to have a great experience at Wendy’s – one they won’t get anywhere else. And if they don’t have that experience, we want to hear it. Feedback is important because it helps us improve.

Are our products the best? Our crew the most courteous and professional? Our restaurants inviting and comfortable?

Every single element of our menu is on the table, so to speak. Nothing is off limits. We added new choices to our Frosty lineup. We reinvented our fries – a key menu item for any restaurant in our industry. We are even reinventing our cheeseburgers.

We’re not a corporation telling our customers what they should like. Instead, we listen to what they want. We’re a restaurant that serves one customer at a time, always striving for better food, better service and an overall better restaurant experience.

The Gold Standard

Delivering Real in our restaurants means serving exceptional cheeseburgers that people love eating.

Driven by this vision, our Culinary Team embarked on major effort to rebuild Wendy’s cheeseburger line from the bun up. Every single ingredient and component that goes into delivering a great-tasting cheeseburger was carefully evaluated, with consumer input driving every step of this process.

Our customers told us they want hot, thick, juicy beef that’s cooked just right. Flavorful, quality beef that can stand up to the condiments and not be overwhelmed by them.

As a result, our new cheeseburger line features patties that are 40% thicker than our current patty. The bun size has been adjusted as well, so the meat-to-bun ratio is optimal. Customers don’t want to work their way through a huge bun to get to the meat. The buns are buttered and toasted, which helps the cheeseburger stay hotter, taste better and resist absorbing the condiments.

But, the team didn’t stop there. They also examined all the fresh toppings. Our new cheeseburgers feature melted cheese; fresh, crinkle-cut dill pickles that are crisper and tastier; red onion rings; and real mayonnaise.

Incorporating all of these enhancements, we are introducing a new premium cheeseburger line in 2011, called Dave’s Hot ‘N Juicy Cheeseburgers, in honor of the man who started it all.

We think Dave will be proud.

Developing New Products

Gerard Lewis is Senior Vice President of Culinary Development.  As the head of Culinary Innovation and Menu Development, Gerard says he would like our food to taste great because of what he calls high-integrity ingredients, authentic food preparation and a signature taste only Wendy’s can deliver.

“We’re working on products made from ingredients you’d see in your pantry at home, not in a science lab,” he said. “Our goal is to deliver great taste through culinary measures that are authentic and less processed.”

Gerard’s degree from the Culinary Institute of America and his experience as a professional chef uniquely positions him to lead a team that specializes in both culinary innovation and food science. With the diversity of talent in these departments, new products can be developed with an eye not only toward taste and customer desire, but also toward operations efficiency. Products need to be made with the same consistent quality in every restaurant every day. The process of making the item is carefully scrutinized and tested.

“Our test kitchen quality translates to the restaurant experience,” Gerard said.

That restaurant experience becomes even more real when the project team members work in actual Wendy’s restaurants. This exercise helps them understand the operational impact of each new product – what it will take to make and serve great food.

With both food scientists and culinary arts experts on board, the Culinary Team draws inspiration from many areas.

A variety of elements must be taken into consideration when a new product is being developed. First, of course, the product itself – what are our goals, what need are we meeting?

Then operationally, can the restaurant crew make the product every day? Consideration also has to be given to the suppliers. Can we have the ingredients we’ll need when we need them, at restaurants around the world? The Culinary Team measures concepts and ideas against these considerations.

As Senior Vice President of Menu Innovation, Lori Estrada oversees the Culinary Team that’s charged with developing menu items that customers will love. She said getting a product from idea to market is a long process with many elements.

“With Dave’s Hot ‘N Juicy Cheeseburger, for instance, we did unbranded tests in research facilities,” Lori said. “We were testing for those things we knew we wanted the hamburger to have: delicious appearance, great flavor, good texture and a beefy aroma.”

Information gained from those tests – in which participants tried other unbranded hamburgers alongside a Wendy’s hamburger – was used back in the Culinary Kitchen to further refine the products.

The Culinary Team had a busy 2010. By the end of the year, they’d tested: ten new salads, nine new hamburgers, three new wraps, two new chicken sandwiches, an array of new beverages and our new Natural-Cut Fries with Sea Salt. Some of these new menu items may be available at your local Wendy’s in the coming year.

In Good Company

Our commitment to quality includes the suppliers with whom we work. To learn more about our Supply Chain practices, click here.