Me and my friend stole burgers from Wendy’s in the late ‘90s.

Back in middle school — and well into high school — me and my best friend were really in to phreaking, prank calls, etc. It was all harmless stuff to keep ourselves entertained. Most pranks were based on challenges such as “how long can you go.” The idea was to keep the other party on the phone for as long as possible. Our record was ~ 23 minutes to order a single pizza.

My friend had multi-line phones at his house (one ISDN, and 3 regular landlines) so we decided to start doing conferenced prank calls. We’d often dial 6 digits, switch to the second line and dial 7, then switch back and dial the final digit, and connect the two random people or stores.

One day we decided to have some fun. We wrote up a script — along with talking points and possible questions from the employees — and called up several Wendy’s locations around town with the same spiel: “hello, please get the manager, and hold for corporate.” It took us a couple hours to call every location (in groups of 4) with managers who were present.

The pitch went something like this:

“This is Wendy’s corporate franchise development. We’re losing sales to McDonalds because we don’t have a Big Mac equivalent. That changes today.

We’re giving each location an opportunity to create something to go up against the Big Mac. We thought the ‘Big Wendy’ might turn off customers, so we’re calling it the double-double Wendy Wendy for now.

You have one week to work together to create your own version of what you think a Big Mac competitor should look and taste like. Starting next Friday, and throughout the following week, a customer will ask for two double-double Wendy Wendy meals. You will ask them what kind of beverage they would like, then instruct them to pull aside while you prepare their meal. You’ll make two double-double Wendy Wendys, and serve them with two Biggie fries and two Biggie drinks of their choice. They will not be charged for this.”

Most of the questions were along the lines of “what should we do for sauce, and what about the middle bun?” We told them to think of something, as that’s part of the fun, and the winning recipe would net everyone a healthy reward.

Flash forward to the following Friday, we tried it out. The first location had no idea what we were talking about, so we left. The second one took about ten minutes to bring us our meals, but it worked! We visited 5 more locations that week, and dined like kings.