Dave Thomas

Creator of: Wendy's

• "Always 3 meals ahead of everybody"
• Born July 2, 1932
• He's adopted, moved to midwest
• when he was 5... mother dies
• Ate all family meals in restaurants (with his dad)
• When he was 12.. had 2 jobs (got fired)
• Started working in restaurants when he was 12
• still a teenager, and holding down a full time job
• got support from his grandmother
• quit high school when he was 15
• got a job as a bus boy
• Cast the people that he worked with, family members
• Joined the army at the age of 18 (sent to germany)
• Cooked in the army
• KFC (Hardland Sanders AKA Colonel) man made Dave Thomas a Multi-Millionaire
• Veteran of food business at age of 19 in 1984.
• "Dave seemed to have more of a knack for restaurants then he did children."
• Dave wanted to 'soak up' all he could for the restaurant bussiness from the KFC guy.
• Dave would go into a KFC store and if something 'wasn't right' he would throw it away.
• Found out once he had $10,000 in t he bank that most of his hard work was still ahead of him
• Being your own boss means having to worry more about work that home.
• First six  years there were 100 locations... 1 year later there were 500.
• Drive-thru brought sales up by 50%.
• Failure rate for ANY new restaurant is HIGH!
• Wendy's was opening more stores than McDonalds.
• Out of the 'back room shadows' by the 1980's
• Wendy's Turned 25 in 1984.