Dear Wendy's

Dear Wendy's,

You don't know me, at least not specifically anyways, but let's just say that I've known my way around a fast food joint in my day and leave it at that. I could pretty much rate the burgers, the chicken, the fries, even specialty items like desserts and milkshakes at all the regular drive-through chains during most of my lifetime. When it comes to fast food, I've basically seen it all, and I've paid for it all through my driver side car window. And that's what makes me uniquely qualified to make this statement to you here today:

Your "natural cut" fries aren't fooling anyone.

Sure, you can keep running those radio commercials telling us about this desirable new feature of your top-selling side order item, and you can keep posting the corporate-approved signage in your parking lot and on your restaurants. You can even keep broadcasting those tv ads where the guy exclaims, after taking one bite of your new natural cut french fries, "Wow!! These are better than McDonalds!"

But I know McDonalds french fries. And you, ma'am, are no McDonalds.

Face it, pigtails: No matter how much you try to tell us about the benefits of this great new style of french fry your restaurants are going out of their way to offer us, in the end you keep running into the same problem: Your "natural cut" fries are simply not close to better in taste, but rather they are actually just a way for Wendy's corporate to save much-needed dough by having your potato vendors not remove the skin before the potatoes are cut into fries and shipped out to the stores. The french fries that result are clearly worse tasting than your previous fry recipe -- this is probably why you and all your competitors have made them the old way for, oh, my entire lifetime up until just a few months ago, not un-coincidentally just shortly after Wendy's missed its quarterly earnings estimates on Wall Street and warned of a profit shortfall for the year to come, due largely to food cost increases -- but you've decided to go ahead with the skin-on french fries anyways, because -- let's face it -- Wendy's' need to save a few bucks is greater than your need to offer the most delicious, albeit more expensive, french fries available.

Wendy's, your whole marketing push around your new "natural cut" french fries is insulting to my intelligence as an occasional customer of your drive-through windows. Ultimately, your "natural cut" fries are nothing more than an exceedingly lame attempt to spin a cost-cutting measure -- one which you doubtless know results in a worse-tasting product for your customers -- as a favor being done for your customers. Unfortunately, anyone whose vote you really should be concerned about has already started adjusting their habits and frequenting the other drive-throughs invariably scattered in close proximity to most Wendy's outlets. Which, believe you me, is not really going to help your little profitability problem at all in the end.

In sum, Wendy's, you are not a seasonal shack on a boardwalk somewhere -- you're a national fast food chain. The American people don't want skin on our national fast food chain french fries today, any more than the American people have wanted skin on our national fast food chain french fries at any time in the past forty years. And if you're going to screw us and force us to eat the skinned-up fries anyways for your own corporate gain at our direct and intended expense, at least have the decency to admit it instead of running a great big marketing push suggesting that you're doing us some great favor. Until then, please consider this note my notice that I will opt to dine elsewhere. And not even the pull of your scrumptious chocolate coca-cola frosty float will lure me back to your establishment until this great wrong has been righted.

Pissed Offingly,
Miffed in Manhattan