A Wendy’s restaurant sign seen in Austin, Texas on November 10, 2025.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Wendy’s stock extended its second day of gains on Thursday as retailers piled into the heavily shorted fast-food chain.
The stock rose another 9% after rising 25.7% in the previous session, its biggest gain since June 2021. The rally appears to be wildly disconnected from the company’s fundamentals and instead reflects the explosion of social media frenzy that has turned Wendy’s into the latest meme stock darling.
“The Reddit crowd is taking over stocks,” Don Bilson, head of event-driven research at Gordon Haskett, wrote in a note.
“GameStop is arguably the granddaddy of meme stocks, and it rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic thanks to an army of monkeys getting their marching orders from the WallStreetBets thread on Reddit,” Bilson said. “This army just happens to be on the move again this morning outside of Columbus, Ohio. That’s where Wendy’s is headquartered and stocked.”
The rally began Wednesday after Wendy’s announced it would appoint former Potbelly Inc. executive Stephen Sillis as chief financial officer and chief strategy officer.
Traders on Reddit forums are increasingly portraying Wendy’s as a company worth “saving” after years of stock market weakness. One widely shared WallStreetBets post was titled “We need to save Wendy’s,” urging peers to rally behind the restaurant chain.
Vanda Research on Thursday flagged Wendy’s as the most extreme case of anomalous retail purchases, noting that the net purchase value was more than seven times the recent norm after the viral “Save Wendy’s” campaign swept the trading community on Reddit.
One Reddit user posted a screenshot showing a roughly $350,000 position in Wendy’s stock under the heading “$WEN to the Moon – 350,000 YOLO,” which garnered hundreds of comments and upvotes from fellow traders. Another post featured a meme image urging investors to “raise the numbers,” joking that buying just one serving of Wendy’s stock was equivalent to “rookie numbers.”
—CNBC’s Nick Wells and Michael Bloom contributed reporting.
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