“Want some fries with that?”
At Wendy’s the answer increasingly seems to be yes, thanks to the chain replacing its thin and soggy french fries with a crisper, skin-on version flavored with sea salt. The fast feeder will keep the pressure on with a campaign launching this week from Kaplan Thaler Group.
Since the new fry hit the menu last November, orders with fries rose almost 10% per 100 transactions, “almost equal to McDonald’s,” Roland Smith, president-CEO of Wendy’s/Arby’s Group, said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month.
“Our new-fry launch was a huge success,” he concluded. “It’s not often that companies like ours take a core product like fries and actually make a significant change and have that change be as positive as it was.”