The reason you won't find Wendy's in Europe
- Thread starter Mr Janny
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- Mar 27, 2006
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My wife and I went to a Dutch island in the Caribbean, this past year on vacation.
@Angie wanted to learn some of the language before hand, so she did some Duo-lingo lessons. We both determined that Dutch is just a silly language that's a cross between German and English. For example, the Dutch word for Sandwich is "boterham" (pronounced BOAT-er-hom) which is literally translated as "butter ham".
So we're at this beautiful resort on this island, eating lunch on the beach, and the waitress is the stunningly beautiful, 6 foot tall, blonde, Dutch girl. She spoke great English and we were making chit chat about how lovely the island is. She said she was a student and lots of dutch students will spend their summers working on the island. My wife @Angie was trying to ingratiate herself a bit, by mentioning how she was impressed with how many languages that the waitress spoke (4 or 5 by my count) and mentioned that she had tried to learn Dutch herself.
The waitress seemed impressed and asked how much she could speak.
@Angie, put on the spot, just exclaimed "BOTERHAM!" loud enough for a good portion of the beach to turn and look at us.
The waitress smiled confusedly and the conversation sort of ended there.
@Angie wanted to learn some of the language before hand, so she did some Duo-lingo lessons. We both determined that Dutch is just a silly language that's a cross between German and English. For example, the Dutch word for Sandwich is "boterham" (pronounced BOAT-er-hom) which is literally translated as "butter ham".
So we're at this beautiful resort on this island, eating lunch on the beach, and the waitress is the stunningly beautiful, 6 foot tall, blonde, Dutch girl. She spoke great English and we were making chit chat about how lovely the island is. She said she was a student and lots of dutch students will spend their summers working on the island. My wife @Angie was trying to ingratiate herself a bit, by mentioning how she was impressed with how many languages that the waitress spoke (4 or 5 by my count) and mentioned that she had tried to learn Dutch herself.
The waitress seemed impressed and asked how much she could speak.
@Angie, put on the spot, just exclaimed "BOTERHAM!" loud enough for a good portion of the beach to turn and look at us.
The waitress smiled confusedly and the conversation sort of ended there.
If you pronounce boterham the wrong way, it can be confused with the word that basically means anal sex.
I've learned from infrequent business conversations with Dutch associates that they don't like Germans so they have that going for them.
- Mar 27, 2006
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No, I made sure to ask for that in English.
I’m pretty sure Chick-fil-A’s manager is also the franchise owner. They don’t allow their franchise owners to own more than 1, maybe 2 stores. And I think they do this to make sure the owner keeps good tabs on the store.
Not sure if it's because the UK left the EU, but right now there are a half dozen Wendy's in England and plans for up to 50 within a year.
- Mar 27, 2006
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"If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much"...Heard this many times in Orange City and Pella. I think they were kidding, right?
I know that they were bought together and merged (and their parent company tried multiple times to turn them all into Carl's Jrs before giving up). But they have identical branding, marketing, and near identical menus now, so they are functionally a single chain restaurant just with two names.
Does anybody remember the big sausage breakfast? I don’t but they had a commercial for it.
- Mar 27, 2006
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Yeah, I know Chik-fil-A defintly has some stringent owner requirements (don't remember them, but I think if you want to own a franchise you have to work in someone elses store for like 6+ months)
The other thing that helps CFAs speed, is a fairly simple menu. When probably 85% of your orders are nuggets, tenders, or a pre-made sandwich with only pickles on it, you don't have much customization to worry about. Makes service very efficient when you can just grab and go to fill an order.
As for service at Wendys, it depends on the manager and store for sure. I worked at one in HS in Omaha and we were constantly in rotation for top 3 (or maybe 5? It was 20 years ago) for service speed in the region. Meanwhile, the one 3 miles away was always a bottom feeder.
I'd recommend anyone visiting Netherlands in summer to make the trip to the coast and the beaches, which are topless.
Stealing the idea is easy, but how do they successfully implement it in so many stores successfully?
Dang it Janny you should have had her learn something useful like
"would you join us for drinks this evening?"
