The many sides of Wendy's

The burger chain has been a basket case for years, what with poor marketing, bad service and sluggish sales. That's why the company's institutional investors, along with billionaire Nelson Peltz, have been urging the board to sell. Highfields Capital Management LP, of Boston, which holds an 8.5 percent stake, told Chairman James Pickett that the naming of Kerrii Anderson as CEO was "a mistake," and that the efforts to improve marketing and operations "have been very disappointing." In the letter, Highfields says that "while Kerrii is a fine person and competent financially, what Wendy's needs is an experienced restaurant operator who also understands consumer branding." Ouch. Last month, the chain reported a 71 percent drop in first-quarter earnings and announced that it had created a special committee of directors to consider strategic options, including a possible sale.

Basket case, right? So guess what happens this morning? The Zagat Survey comes out with its rankings for the best fast food and - you're probably way ahead of me - Wendy's winds up as No. 1 for best food, best facilities, best service and most popular among the mega-chains (Panera Bread was tops among all fast food chains, large and small). On burgers, Wendy's received 30 percent of the best burger votes (compared with a paltry 13 percent for McDonald's). Now you have to understand that this isn't just some barely noticed survey. The results were on NBC's "Today" show, and the online world is crammed this afternoon with write-ups about how Wendy's beat out the other mega-chains. It'll be all over the tube tonight and in all the papers tomorrow. So what does Peltz and the others do now? They'll probably just ignore all those thousand of Zagat respondents (rich guys tend not to listen to the huddled masses), but is it possible, just possible, that Ms. Anderson, besides being "a fine person," is onto something?