Wendy's

When I was going to IPFW, I ate at this Wendy's a number of times.  It was always a good Wendy's, and you could segment your food with stuff from the attached convenience store as an added bonus.

I think there's a plaque in the restaurant that dives into the history of Wendy's, but I never stopped to really read it.  It may discuss what I'm going to discuss here.  There's a neat story behind this Wendy's that I never realized until now.

Fort Wayne-ers know:  Fort Wayne has always been a hotbed for restaurants, and has been a test market for restaurants as well.  There was a restaurant in Fort Wayne called the "Hobby Ranch House."  It was one location of a series of restaurants, each called "Hobby House."  Per the Internet, the Hobby Ranch House stood on this site.

Anyhow, in the late forties, a 15 year old kid named Dave was working at the restaurant.  He had just moved to Fort Wayne, IN from Knoxville, TN, after losing his restaurant job in Knoxville due to getting in an argument with the manager.  He vowed to never lose another job in his life.  Eventually, the kid dropped out of high school to work full time at the restaurant--a decision that he would publicly regret the rest of his life.  When the Korean War broke out in 1950, he volunteered for he Army, and volunteered to be a cook.  He was sent to Germany, prepared food for 2000 soldiers a day, rose to the rank of Staff Sargent, and returned to the Hobby House in Fort Wayne after he was discharged.

After Dave's return to the hobby house, he became head cook of the restaurant.  Colonel Harland Sanders (yes, of KFC) showed up in Fort Wayne and tried selling franchises to the owners of the Fort Wayne Hobby Houses (owned by the Clauss family).  At first, they turned him down, but Colonel Sanders persisted.  They the Clausses and Dave eventually bought into the franchise.

At this point, Dave began working with the Colonel about how to market KFC, helped to develop the KFC menu, and even made the suggestion that the Colonel should appear in his own commercials.  The Clausses expanded their KFC franchise into Ohio, and eventually had some stores that were failing in Ohio.  In the mid 60's, the Clausses sent Dave to those stores to turn them around.

...and turn them around he did.  By 1968, the stores were doing so well that he sold his share in them back to Colonel Sanders for $1,500,000.  

At this point, Dave had a daughter named Melinda Lou.  However, she had a hard time pronouncing her name at a young age, and ended up with the nickname "Wenda,"  a mis-pronunciation of her name.  The following year, Dave opened a burger joint in Columbus, Ohio.  He decided to base the name of the restaurant on a derivative of his daughter's nickname.  Dave (as you probably have guessed by now--Dave Thomas) opened the Columbus, OH restaurant as the first Wendy's in 1969.

The fact that this is a Wendy's today is all coincidental (and it is NOT the original building of the Hobby Ranch House), but Dave Thomas did get his start at this corner, and KFC's history was also pretty heavily affected by this location, as well.