The hamburger is almost universally uniform across the planet. You can step into a restaurant anywhere from Russia to Panama, order a burger, and you’ll be served circular beef patty…except at Wendy’s. I’ve always assumed that the square burgers at Wendy’s had something to do with standing out from the competition, likely because they came of age after McDonald’s and needed to set themselves apart from the pack. Well, I was wrong, or at least I was half wrong.
There’s a very specific reasoning behind Wendy’s iconic square burger patties and Kate Taylor over at Business Insider reported on this a little while back. As it turns out, the square patty is symbolic of the Wendy’s business mantra:
Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas “wanted to make sure that the patty sticks out of the bun so that everyone can see it, see the juiciness,” Frank Vamos, director of brand communications for the company, told Thrillist.
There’s also a more symbolic reason: The square burger represents a fast-food chain that refuses to cut corners, according to Vamos.
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So, I get what they’re going for here. It’s supposed to be symbolic of their superior product and refusal to cut costs or whatever, but someone needs to explain to them that there are no corners in a fucking circle. When you’re pressing a burger patty you just grab the beef and squeeze it into a circular shape.
At NO POINT are there any goddamn corners in the burger, except of course when you shape it into a square…
What’s interesting is the Wendy’s square burger patties we see today are actually less square-shaped than the burgers from just a few years ago because Wendy’s ran a bunch of tests and found out that customers reported round/natural shaped burgers actually tasted better.