Wendy’s, the world’s third largest burger joint, is having a makeover. From being “Wendy’s Old Fashioned Burgers” we’re now told it’s just “Wendy’s.” The ginger-haired befreckled Wendy remains on the logo, though in their TV spots she’s a hipper twentysomething. Yet behind the new facade lie some very old-fashioned attitudes.

Above all, like every corporation, Wendy’s exists for the sole purpose of bringing value to its shareholders. This is why shareholders at Wendy’s Annual Meeting in New York last Thursday found themselves in the company of Kerry Kennedy of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, and Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International.

One might imagine that Wendy’s cares little about conditions in its supply chain because it is, after all, a burger company. But, visit Wendy’s investor relations online and you’ll see that they care enough about their suppliers to ensure that their packaging is somewhat compostable, and that their animals aren’t treated too badly, before they’re turned into square burgers. The farmworkers who supply Wendy’s with the fresh tomato slices on those burgers appear, however, to be less important than the company’s ground beef.

Wendy’s might want to point to the other fast food companies, the number one and number two companies, for instance, and insist that it’ll cost Wendy’s too much to comply with decent treatment of farmworkers in their supply chain. Thing is, as Kerry Kennedy told the shareholders “The CIW has signed agreements with four of the five largest [fast] food corporations in America. All… except for Wendy’s.”

Wendy’s might want to claim that this whole thing is overblown. But,
I’ll say it again, things had been so extremely bad that multiple instances of modern-day slavery have been prosecuted in Florida’s tomato fields in recent years.

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