Wendy’s closing 140 ‘outdated’ restaurants – but there’s a twist

Fast food chain Wendy’s will close 140 more locations in the US – while forging forward with a plan to open roughly the same number in new restaurants.

Wendy’s will shutter the dozens of restaurants that are ‘outdated and located in underperforming’ places by the end of this year, the company’s CEO Kirk Tanner said in an earnings call on Thursday.

The affected restaurants were performing ‘well below the system average’, he said.

Wendy’s Chief Financial Officer Gunther Plosch said the average volume unit is about $1.1million.

The company ‘conducted a robust review of individual restaurants to ensure they meet our expectations for sales, have the profitability to fuel growth, and deliver the Wendy’s brand experience for customers,’ Tanner said.

But ‘overall, Wendy’s system is incredibly healthy’, he said.

A list of the 140 locations closing has not been disclosed. It comes on top of 100 restaurants that Wendy’s already announced to be closing back in May.

However, the chain is expecting to wind up with approximately the same number of total locations, as it worked to open 250 to 300 new restaurants this year.

‘After our strategic review, we now expect a similar number of closures as openings, so we expect net unit growth in 2024 to be roughly flat,’ Wendy’s spokesperson Heidi Schauer told USA Today.

Wendy’s had 6,010 locations in the US as of its third financial quarter at the end of September, and a total of 7,166 including international sites.

The chain opened its first restaurant in 1969 in Columbus, Ohio, and is known for its square-shaped hamburger patties.

It is not the only company to take the strategy of shuttering ‘underperforming’ locations while opening new ones.

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven announced it is closing 444 locations across North America, but is planning to open 600 others in a fast-casual food stores format.

Wendy’s executives casted its operations as ‘healthy’ as McDonald’s weathers an E. coli outbreak linked to its Quarter Pounder burgers that has led to 90 cases of sickened customers as of Thursday.

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