How Wendy's 4 For $4 Changed Fast Food

The year was 2015, if you can remember it (a lot has happened over the past decade). Barack Obama was President, "The Hills" by The Weeknd topped the music charts, $1 had the purchasing power of $1.35 in 2025 (ow! not the face!), and Wendy's debuted the 4 for $4. Gen One of this meal deal included a hamburger, four-piece chicken nuggets, small fries, and a small drink. The 4 for $4 wasn't just a high-value fill-up — it was also evidence to consumers that the modern fast-food industry could actually be as affordable and convenient as they had come to expect in years past.

The arrival of the 4 for $4 quite literally changed the fast food game industry-wide. The bar had been set. Wendy's launched the deal in October 2015, and by February 2016, competitors were scrambling to keep pace. Burger King had already introduced a 5 for $4 meal deal to keep pace (including the same offerings as Wendy's four-piece, plus a chocolate chip cookie), Carl's Jr. rolled out its own 4 for $4, and McDonald's released the "McPick 2." "We are very happy with the early results, and we are meeting a consumer need for a compelling value with a high quality, unique offering," Emil Brolick, Wendy's President and CEO, said during a conference call back in November 2015, one month after the 4 for $4's premiere, as reported by Food Business News. Wendy's expanded to give customers a choice from eight entree sandwiches in 2018.

Even at the time of its initial release, Wendy's never promised to keep the deal forever. "Now, will that always be 4 by $4? I will not share that with you," foreshadowed Emil Brolick in the November 2015 conference call. "But there will be a price-value message underneath that. And I think that is the most important thing to take away from this."

For low-income consumers with limited discretionary budgets, offering a permanent menu of low-cost-per-item meal bundles has proven to be an effective traffic-boosting move for fast food brands. Long before the 4 for $4, Wendy's was the first fast food giant to put the concept of the value menu on the map. In 1989, to get an edge over competitors in the "99-cent burger war," "We had the idea of rather than selling one of our big items at 99 cents, creating a whole menu with 99-cent items," Denny Lynch, former Wendy's senior vice president of communications, told QSR Web back in 2010. Wendy's original 99 Cent Menu included an impressive nine items, but its impact was far larger. Burger King went on to establish a value menu in 1998, and McDonald's Dollar Menu followed in 2003. Nowadays, however, the pendulum seems to be swinging in the opposite direction. According to a 2024 poll by Revenue Management Solutions (via CBS News), about 25% of consumers making below $50K annually reported finding fast food too expensive to justify buying.

Affordable "anything" has become something of an endangered species in the modern American market. A 2025 report by POS-system Toast found that a McDonald's Quarter Pounder with cheese has risen in cost by 20% in the past six years, while the 10-piece McNuggets meal rose 28% in the past five years. To retain penny-pinching customers, McDonald's has extended its $5 meal deal through summer 2025, and Taco Bell dropped $5, $7, and $9 "value boxes" available through June. Falling back on Wendy's high-value promotion tactic might be the failsafe saving grace the industry needs — if it's even possible to execute anymore. A Reddit post from one year ago asks "What happened to the 4 for $4?" The thread is filled with forlorn foodies dryly lamenting the deal's slow fade: "It died," "Inflation," "Everything's more expensive now," and (in another thread) "Soon maybe you'll get 4 nuggets for $4."

Today, the Meal Deals section of Wendy's online menu only lists one 4-for-$4-adjacent offering (the Jr. Cheeseburger 444 with burger, four-piece chicken nugget, fry, and drink). Wendy's revolutionary quartet seems to have been eclipsed by the Biggie Bag, another meal deal that includes an entree item (notably heartier sandwiches) plus a nugget, drink or Frosty, and fry. At a Wendy's location in Brooklyn, NY, the Biggie Bags cost $5-$7 depending on the choice of sandwich, and the renamed "444" combo costs $4.44.