Wendy's 12 Days of Buy One Get One

[Alpha8472]

Most people don't want a buy one get one of the same item. Saving one item and reheating it the next day is not that appealing.

https://www.brandeating.com/

[storewanderer]

Most people don't want a buy one get one of the same item. Saving one item and reheating it the next day is not that appealing.

https://www.brandeating.com/

It appears Wendys franchisees have had it with promotions. Also the money losing breakfast program is a huge problem. The only Hail Mary for their breakfast at this point is to move to All Day Breakfast but their stuff doesn't taste great when it sits around too long and I'm not sure they have enough volume to make All Day work. Wendys is incapable of running a cook to order model like Jack in the Box and Sonic for some reason.

Many franchisees are well above the nationally advertised $5 Biggie Bags price. Some franchisees refuse to let you order in store (unless they have a kiosk... the 4 for 4 is orderable on the kiosks...) to get the promotion prices like require use of the app for the 4 for $4 or the breakfast 2 for $3, etc.

So instead of free item promotions like Jack in the Box, Carls, and McDonalds are doing for Christmas they will do buy 1 get 1 free offers. But they frequently have buy 1 get 1 free offers in their app. So how is this anything special?

[Alpha8472]

I totally agree. These "deals" are awful. These holiday deals seem to be appearing as customers are visiting these fast food restaurants less often.

Wendy's seems to have fewer and fewer cars in the drive thru these days. Business has really gone down.

Burger King has a current deal with various free items with a $1 purchase on the app: Original chicken sandwich, any size soft drink, 4 piece chicken fries, crossoin'wich, or cheeseburger.

[storewanderer]

I totally agree. These "deals" are awful. These holiday deals seem to be appearing as customers are visiting these fast food restaurants less often.

Wendy's seems to have fewer and fewer cars in the drive thru these days. Business has really gone down.

Burger King has a current deal with various free items with a $1 purchase on the app: Original chicken sandwich, any size soft drink, 4 piece chicken fries, crossoin'wich, or cheeseburger.

The Krabby Patty promotion seemed to get Wendys a lot of attention but even during the final weeks of the promotion that traffic didn't seem to stick around. The $1 drink promotion didn't seem to get much attention either. Carls Jr. was supposedly going to do $1 drinks in some markets but I can't figure out where or if they canceled that idea after seeing Wendys stopped. I was hoping enough of these chains would go to a $1 drink that it would force McDonalds back down to $1 again. Circle K has retained its 79cents any size fountain drink at least at corporate locations which surprised me when I stopped at one last week and still got to pay just 79cents for a 42oz.

All of these fast food chains are obviously struggling on traffic and that is why we are seeing these rather heavy promotional efforts occurring pretty much across the board.

[storewanderer]

Today's deal is Buy 1 Double get 1 Free- Delivery Only.

[cjd]

That’s a shame the breakfast program hasn’t caught on. The items are quite good.

[storewanderer]

That’s a shame the breakfast program hasn’t caught on. The items are quite good.

The core items are the best in the industry- biscuits, croissants, breakfast potatoes.

Some of the new items they've rolled out aren't great. The burritos and english muffins are okay at best.

Their upper management of course loves breakfast since it gets them extra royalties. Forget how it impacts the franchisees.
From a recent news release:
"CEO Kirk Tanner called it “an incredibly important daypart” and “highly profitable.” The chain drove breakfast dollar growth ahead of the category in the second quarter. Yet, Wendy's morning offering hasn't reached its potential. Currently, breakfast earns about $3,000 per week per store or roughly $156,000 per year." From Aug 1, 2024

So $3,000 per week per store. So that is about $420 per day in breakfast sales. Breakfast is let's say from 6:30 AM to 10:30 AM. So you do $105 per hour in sales in those 4 hours. The math just doesn't work for the location's P&L.

[Super S]

That’s a shame the breakfast program hasn’t caught on. The items are quite good.

Wendy's got it right with the food. Best fast food breakfast sandwiches in my opinion. But there are many Wendy's where the dining room doesn't even open until 9AM, despite having the drive-thru open earlier. They are losing some dine-in sales.

I really hope that they can stick it out with the breakfast program. Their past attempts with this have not been great, but as I said, they got a lot of things right this time.

[storewanderer]

That’s a shame the breakfast program hasn’t caught on. The items are quite good.

Wendy's got it right with the food. Best fast food breakfast sandwiches in my opinion. But there are many Wendy's where the dining room doesn't even open until 9AM, despite having the drive-thru open earlier. They are losing some dine-in sales.

I really hope that they can stick it out with the breakfast program. Their past attempts with this have not been great, but as I said, they got a lot of things right this time.

The locations here are supposed to open inside at 6:30 for breakfast but I've encountered a locked door close to 9 AM so many times...

The corporate Wendys program is actually not to open inside at breakfast until 9 AM. That is what they work into their labor model. I have no idea where they got that idea from. I am not aware of any other chains who run drive through only at breakfast.