\"Wendy\'s\" Dave Thomas Hand Signed TLS Dated 1995 on Wendy\'s Letterhead For Sale

Up for sale "Wendy's" Dave Thomas Signed TLS Dated 1995 on Wendy's letterhead. This sale includes an official corporate photo of Dave Thomas.

ES-2812C

Rex

David Thomas (July 2, 1932 –

January 8, 2002) was an American businessman, philanthropist, and fast-food

tycoon. Thomas was the founder and chief executive officer of Wendy's, a fast-food restaurant chain

specializing in hamburgers. He is also known for

appearing in more than 800 commercial advertisements for the chain from 1989 to

2002, more than any other company founder in television history. Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey,

his biological father's name was Sam and his biological mother's name was

Molly. Thomas was adopted between six weeks and six months later by Rex and

Auleva Thomas, and as an adult became a well-known advocate for adoption, founding the Dave Thomas

Foundation for Adoption. After his adoptive mother's death when he

was 5, his father moved around the country seeking work. Thomas spent some of

his early childhood near Kalamazoo, Michigan, with

his grandmother, Minnie Sinclair, whom he credited with teaching him the

importance of service and treating others well and with respect, lessons that

helped him in his future business life. At age 12, Thomas had his

first job at Regas Restaurant, a fine dining restaurant in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, then

lost it in a dispute with his boss; decades later, Regas Restaurant installed a

large autographed poster of Thomas just inside their entrance, which remained

until the business closed in 2010. He vowed never to lose another job. Moving

with his father, by 15 he was working at the Hobby House Restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. When

his father prepared to move again, Thomas decided to stay in Fort Wayne,

dropping out of high school to work full-time at the restaurant. Thomas, who

considered ending his schooling the greatest mistake of his life, did not

graduate from high school until 1993, when he obtained a GED. He

subsequently became an education advocate and founded the Dave Thomas Education

Center in Coconut Creek, Florida,

which offers GED classes to young adults. At the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, rather than waiting for the draft, he

volunteered for the U.S. Army at age 18

to have some choice in assignments. Having food production and service

experience, Thomas requested the Cook's and Baker's School at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was sent to West Germany as a mess sergeant and was responsible for

the daily meals of 2,000 soldiers, rising to the rank of staff sergeant. After his

discharge in 1953, Thomas returned to Fort Wayne and the Hobby House. In the

mid-1950s, Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Col. Harland Sanders came to Fort Wayne, hoping to find

restaurateurs with established businesses to whom he could try to sell KFC

franchises. At first, Thomas – who was the head cook at a restaurant – and the

Clauss family declined Sanders' offer, but Sanders persisted, and the Clauss

family franchised their restaurant with KFC; they also later owned many other

KFC franchises in the Midwest. During this time,

Thomas worked with Sanders on many projects to make KFC more profitable and

give it brand recognition. Among other ideas for improvements, Thomas suggested

that KFC reduce the number of items on its menu and instead focus on a

signature dish; he also proposed that KFC make commercials in which Sanders

would personally appear. Thomas was sent by the Clauss family in the mid-1960s

to help turn around four of their failing KFC stores in Columbus, Ohio.

By 1968, Thomas had increased sales in the four fried chicken restaurants so

much that he sold his share in them back to Sanders for more than $1.5 million.

This experience would prove invaluable to Thomas when he began Wendy's about a

year later. After serving as a regional director for Kentucky Fried Chicken,

Thomas became part of the investor group which founded Arthur Treacher's. His

involvement with the new restaurant lasted less than a year before he went on

to found Wendy's. Thomas opened his first Wendy's in Columbus, Ohio, November 15, 1969. This original restaurant

remained operational until March 2, 2007, when it was closed due to lagging

sales. Thomas named the restaurant after his eight-year-old daughter Melinda Lou, whose nickname was "Wendy", stemming

from the child's inability to say her own name at a young age. According

to Bio TV, Dave claims that people nicknamed his daughter

"Wenda. Not Wendy, but Wenda. 'I'm going to call it Wendy's Old his death in 2002, Thomas admitted regret for

naming the franchise after his daughter, saying "I should’ve just named it

after myself, because it put a lot of pressure on [her]." In 1982, Thomas

resigned from his day-to-day operations at Wendy's. However, by 1985, several

company business decisions, including an awkward new breakfast menu and loss in

brand awareness due to fizzled marketing efforts, caused the company's new

president to urge Thomas back into a more active role with Wendy's. Thomas

began to visit franchises and espouse his hardworking, so-called

"mop-bucket attitude". In 1989, he took on a significant role as the

TV spokesperson in a series of commercials for the brand. Thomas was not a

natural actor, and initially, his performances were criticized as stiff and

ineffective by advertising critics.

By 1990, after efforts by Wendy's advertising agency, Backer Spielvolgel

Bates, to get humor into the campaign, a decision was made to portray Thomas in

a more self-deprecating and folksy manner, which proved much more popular with

test audiences. Consumer brand awareness of Wendy's eventually regained

levels it had not achieved since octogenarian Clara Peller's wildly popular "Where's the beef?"

campaign of 1984.

With his natural self-effacing style and his relaxed manner, Thomas

quickly became a household name. A company survey during the 1990s, a decade

during which Thomas starred in every Wendy's commercial that aired, found that

90% of Americans knew who Thomas was. After more than 800 commercials,[4] it was clear that Thomas played a major role in

Wendy's status as the third most popular burger restaurant in the U.S. In 1994,

Thomas made a cameo appearance as

himself in Bionic Ever After?, a

reunion TV movie based upon The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman.