Fake News: Wendy’s Fast-Food
Recent Facebook and Instagram posts (October and November 2023) have expressed that Wendy’s fast-food chain are planning on closing down in late 2023. A picture of Wendy’s fast-food restaurant founder, Dave Thomas is shown on the online advertisements published on Facebook and Instagram. The caption of the advertisement expresses; “Closing Time: All The Restaurant Chains Closing.”. At first these advertisements seemed true and believable. However, after searching up and examining this news, it is clear that this is just another example of fake news that is going around on the Internet.
Research Results
After a quick Google search on “Wendy’s closing its doors.”, many articles stated the fact that the fast-food chain is not closing its doors. Fact checking sources like Snopes and Verify, labeled that this claim is false. According to Snopes, expressed that “Wendy’s itself is not going out of business, but the restaurant’s biggest franchisee operator, NPC International, sadly is.”. With that being said, Wendy’s restaurants are not closing their doors. The new ownership of these restaurants has been in place since 2021 and Wendy’s fast-food chain is still open to this day. The website Verify expressed the same thing. This article is a fake news. Since the change of the new ownership, the website wrote that “Wendy’s has opened 72 new restaurants in the third quarter of 2023, with 152 global restaurant openings this year as of late November, according to its spokesperson.”. That proves that the food-chain is still working to this day. Based on the information’s find on the Internet, we can conclude that the fast-food chain, Wendy’s, are in fact not closing their doors. On the website “Eat This, Not That”, a go-to resource for professional health and nutrition guidance, the writer has expressed that “The burger chain generated over $535 million in revenue during just Q4 2022, representing a 13.4% uptick in comparison to Q4 2021 ($473.2 million). Looking ahead to 2023, the chain expects global system-wide sales to grow by roughly 6–8%.”. With that being said, we can determine that the fast-food restaurants Wendy’s are definitely not closing their doors with the amount of revenues that they made in 2022 and the projected amount that they will make this year. Fakes news can often fool the readers and make them think some certain things. However, after making my research on the topic, it is easy for me to ascertain the fact that the chain Wendy’s are still in the industry of fast-food.
To conclude, fake news is often used in today’s world to make us believe to the things we can relate easily. Social media platforms might be a great tool, but it is important to be aware of what we read, see and hear about on different platforms like Instagram and Facebook. By using our critical thinking skills, we are more aware and can detect better fake news stories on social media.
Work Cited
Anderer, J. (2023, April 11). 5 big changes you’ll see at Wendy’s this year. Eat This Not That. https://www.eatthis.com/big-changes-wendys/#:~:text=The%20burger%20chain%20generated%20over,by%20roughly%206%2D8%25
Liles, J. (2023, November 24). Is Wendy’s closing all locations, as announced in late 2023? Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wendys-closing-locations-2023/
Loe, Megan. (2023, November 28). No, Wendy’s isn’t closing all of its locations. Verify. https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/food-verify/wendys-not-closing-all-restaurant-locations/536-75ad3606-bde8-4a0c-9a78-349d15c9536b