The Wendy's Company

The Wendy's Company is an American fast food restaurant chain headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, one of the largest hamburger fast food chains in the world. It was founded in 1969 by Dave Thomas, who opened the first Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, naming it after his daughter Melinda Lou Thomas, whose family nickname was Wendy. Wendy's built its early identity around square hamburger patties and fresh, never frozen beef, a point of differentiation from larger rivals McDonald's and Burger King, and the chain became widely known in the 1980s for its Where's the Beef advertising campaign featuring an elderly customer questioning a competitor's undersized burger.