Wendy’s sales got crushed during the pandemic — last quarter was even worse
The chain is planning to close as many as 6% of its locations in the first half of 2026.
In 1984, Wendy’s launched what has to be one of the most successful advertising campaigns in the history of fast food, with its iconic “Where’s the beef?” slogan posed by 81-year-old Clara Peller going the 1980s equivalent of viral, reportedly helping Wendy’s revenues soar by 31% year on year.
Now, more than 40 years later, American fans of the burger chain might be asking, “Where’s the restaurant?” as Wendy’s continues to shutter its square-burger-selling outposts around the country. The company plans to reduce its US footprint by 5% to 6% (about 300 locations) in the first half of 2026 as part of a wider turnaround effort, it revealed in its earnings call on Friday.
Wendy’s is moving to close “consistently underperforming restaurants,” per interim CEO Ken Cook, with US same-restaurant sales slipping a staggering 11.3% for the last quarter of 2025 and some 5.6% for the year all told. For context, US same-restaurant sales growth fell to just -4.4% during the second quarter of 2020, when Wendy’s shut dining rooms across the states to focus on delivery and drive-thru services during Covid.
A strong “SpongeBob SquarePants” collaboration in the same quarter of 2024 may have exacerbated how bad this Q4 looked, and Wendy’s chief accounting officer, Suzanne Thuerk, indicated that lower marketing spend could have contributed to the US drop-off. But Thuerk conceded there is a much simpler issue at hand: people just aren’t showing up to Wendy’s restaurants, with traffic way down — a trend only “partially offset by a higher average check.”
Clearly, the burger chain’s attempt to get in on the chicken strip boom with its “Wendy’s Tendys” toward the end of last year was not enough to get more customers through the door, and investors still seem unconvinced by the company’s turnaround efforts, with the stock down almost 10% so far this year.
