My Fast Food Brings all the Stocks to the Yard, and They're Like' "It's Fresher than Yours"

Please note the stylistic glottal stop (') in the title. I added it just for you.

Alright, this topic was submitted by a friend. This all went down on Jan 20, 2011. I'm a bit late entering the scene, but oh well. So let's talk about how the company who owns Wendy's is talking about selling Arby's. While we are at it, we may as well think about how YUM is contemplating selling A&W Restaurants and the Long John Silver string as well.

How I look at this is completely different than how economists, politicians, or anyone else may look at it. I mean, I don't care about numbers and how Wendy's may do better by focusing their resources on Wendy's instead of attempting to buoy Arby's, which suffered from a series of significant drops last year (11.9% in the first quarter, 7.4% in the second quarter, and 5.9% in the third quarter). At least, I don't think about it how economists may quantitatively look at it. I am a bit more right-brained than that. I am a normal person who cares about what normal people care about: how this quantitatively affects me.

So naturally, my major concerns are about the food and the commercials.

I am partial toward Arby's. I mean, let's face it. The roast beef sandwiches are unique and tempting enough, but add in those curly fries and Arby's sauce, and I am all over that food -- even if it doesn't happen to be during one of their famous "five for five" (or whatever inflation has increased it to) deals.

Wendy's food is also top-of-the-fast-food-line. Give me some fries to dip in a frosty, and I am having a good day. Their new line of chicken is also pretty tasty, and I have always been a fan of the selection from which you can pull your side substitutions (baked potato, chili, etc).

So, what will this split mean for the food of these two chains? Will we lose our delicious "fresh" substitutes to BK and McDonald's? Will Arby's perhaps decrease their outrageous prices since stock has gone up now? (Yeah, right. But I like to be optimistic.)

I am not too scared of losing the food selections from any of the chains in question, nor am I worried about losing the chains themselves. What I am worried about, however, is what the commercials will be like under new management.

Fast food has built itself quite the reputation for obnoxious commercials. Why, I don't know. Perhaps they are targeting an audience I do not connect to, or they realize everyone who eats fast food will eat fast food no matter what and their ad campaigns have turned into a competition to see who can spend the least amount of money to be the most annoying. I think Quizno's wins the most annoying award for their rat/hamster/chinchilla things they had a while back. And, obviously, this advertising works to an extent. I mean, I just mention Quizno's in my blog because of a blog-awful string of ads. Despite name recognition however, these ads most definitely failed at what I would think would be more important: I did not once see or hear one of those ads and say "You know, I would like to eat at Quizno's right now" and reverse out of the Subway parking lot to get me some rodent-endorsed toasted subs.

What I would think would be more important would be selling the product and getting new customers who will return to your fast food joint. Ads like the new Old Spice campaign work wonders for that. The world is full of creative people -- statistically speaking it isn't an exaggeration to say there are hundreds of millions of them -- so, I hope the new owners of the fast food biz give us some entertainment for the food from which we are going to get heart disease. And, Wendy's and Arby's sure are more fresh than some of the alternatives, so I am rooting for them.

Let's put away the giant Arby's ovenmit for good. Let's make the world a better place.