“There can’t be two Wendy’s,” Dean Tully says.
The owner of the Whyalla branch of the Australian ice-cream and hotdog chain Wendy’s Milk Bar was responding to Monday’s announcement that the US fast food chain Wendy’s is planning to open hundreds of outlets down under.
“They can come to Australia and strut their stuff by all means but I wouldn’t want it to be under the Wendy’s banner,” Tully said.
“We don’t have two Hungry Jack’s. We don’t have two McDonald’s. We are Wendy’s.”
Wendy’s Milk Bar, formerly known as Wendy’s Supa Sundaes, opened in South Australia in 1979 and it now has 120 stores across Australia and New Zealand, with its pink banner often found in shopping malls.
The US burger chain Wendy’s, recognised by its logo of a red-haired girl with pigtails and famed for its square beef patties and Frosty desert, plans to enter the Australian market on the east coast after hosting a pop-up event in Sydney in 2021 to test the waters.
Abigail Pringle, the president of Wendy’s, , told the Australian Financial Review the chain was this week hosting talks with potential Australian franchisees about opening the restaurants, including the purchase of land for them.
“We think that the Australian market could be hundreds of restaurants,” she told the publication.
The US chain will no doubt want to avoid a repeat of the Burger King experience, which resulted in the US chain rebranding to Hungry Jack’s in Australia due to an existing Burger King franchise in the country.
Or the experience of Taco Bell, whose entry into Australia was delayed due to another Mexican chain named Taco Bill, said Prof Michael Handler, a trade mark law expert at UNSW.
Handler said the decision-making power lies with the Australian Wendy’s chain given it is the local trader that was first to the market.
But he said it’s likely the two chains will negotiate and come to an agreement to coexist in Australia under their respective names – particularly given one focuses on ice-creams and the other is a burger restaurant.
“They can make a case that what they’re doing won’t cause confusion,” Handler said.
“I can imagine that Australian consumers won’t be too confused and can differentiate the longstanding ice-cream business from the big international burger chain, so it’s plausible to think that the two can coexist.”
Handler said the situation becomes difficult when the product offerings overlap, such as in the case of Taco Bell and Taco Bill where both were selling Mexican food, or the Burger King case where both the Australian and US chains were selling hamburgers.
One owner of a Wendy’s Milk Bar store in New South Wales said she wasn’t concerned and there was unlikely to be confusion between the outlets.
“They’re burgers and we’re a hotdogs and ice-cream store so it is different,” she said. “Perhaps it will cause issues for them and they’ll find Australians are walking in asking for a hotdog.”
The US chain Wendy’s currently operates in 29 countries with more than 7,000 restaurants.
Supatreats Australia, which owns Wendy’s Milk Bar, was contacted for comment.
