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Staff post about: Dave Thomas Become an Author

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“It all comes back to the basics,” said Thomas. “Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they'll keep coming back.”

The logic was deceptively simple but infallible. Thomas made customer satisfaction his number one priority and focused on quality in order to ensure this. He was never an extravagant man nor did he ever have extravagant ambitions. He even once joked, “I thought if I owned a restaurant, I could eat for free.” Despite going from practical rags-to-riches, Thomas considered himself “simply a hamburger cook.” Thomas had a simple vision and knew that it would be a simple plan that would be the key to success.

When he was once asked if Wendy’s was indeed the number two fast-food chain in the industry, Thomas replied, “Yes, but first in quality.” To Thomas, quality was the recipe behind his success. From the food he served to the way he treated people throughout his life, quality meant everything to Thomas. His passion for and commitment to quality was so strong that he even made “Quality is Our Recipe” a permanent feature of the Wendy’s logo. “If we take care of our customers every day and exceed their expectations, we’ll earn their loyalty,” he said. “Take care of your business and your business will take care of you.”

At a time when most of his competitors were mass-producing their food, Wendy’s was preparing fresh, made-to-order hamburgers. “We don’t make a sandwich until it’s sold, so every Wendy’s sandwich is served hot-off-the-grill with the customer’s choice of toppings,” said Thomas. “They aren’t pre-made and put under a heat lamp.” Thomas also insisted on calling them “hamburgers” and not “burgers”, believing that this would elevate hamburger-making to an art form.

Everything had to start with the product. Without a first-class product, Thomas believed that there was no point focusing on marketing or other aspects of his business. Thus, in the early days, Thomas spent all of his free time visiting as many hamburger stands and restaurants as he could in order to learn what he could from them and use that knowledge to his advantage. No detail was too small to look after. “You can't have a clean floor with a dirty mop bucket,” said Thomas. “To be successful, you need to take care of the basics of your business – and that means making sure you don't overlook the little details.” From the food to the service to the atmosphere inside a Wendy’s, Thomas wanted everything to be better than the best.

Thomas believed that this logic could be applied to any industry, not just the fast-food business. “Whether you sell hamburgers or computers, we're all in the customer service
business,” he said. “Our goal must be to exceed our customers’ expectations every day.” It was to this goal that Thomas devoted his life and his business. “Any time you have family and you have people sitting around the table, normally our business should be good,” he said. But, it would only be by providing quality products and service that this would become a reality.

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