Neither firm responded to a request for remark.
The American Wendy’s would possibly nonetheless face some pushback from native shoppers, particularly if Australian franchisees felt they had been getting a nasty deal, Mr. Terry, of the College of Sydney, mentioned. “Nothing drives the patriotism of the Australians like the large boys from abroad coming in and driving roughshod over every little thing,” he mentioned.
Comparable points have bedeviled different American fast-food corporations trying to the Australian market.
In 1981, Taco Bell (in the US) clashed with an organization by the identical identify in Sydney’s Bondi Seaside space. (The American outfit misplaced.) Then in 2021, it reached a legal settlement with an Australian Mexican restaurant, Taco Invoice. And in Sydney, an organization referred to as Down N’ Out Burger was pressured to vary its identify to Excessive N’ Dry in 2020, after years of legal wrangling with the West Coast quick meals chain In-N-Out.
It’s not simply eating places creating confusion. An Australian residence items firm — Goal — has no relation to the American big box retailer of the same name, regardless of having equivalent branding, bull’s-eye logos and related inventory.
For Mr. Cowin, of Hungry Jack’s, the information dredged up reminiscences from the early Eighties, when Wendy’s final tried to plant its flag in Australia.
“What they don’t point out is that they’ve been right here earlier than,” Mr. Cowin told the Australian Financial Review on Monday. On the time, he had been the victor, swooping in to buy 11 Wendy’s eating places after the corporate left Australia in 1985. He closed two shops and transformed 9 others into Hungry Jack’s retailers.
Naming rights apart, the Australian market was nonetheless tougher to interrupt into than it’d seem. “Loads of these corporations are available in pondering Australia is the 51st state of the US, as a result of we converse the identical language,” he mentioned, including: “It’s going to be powerful for anybody ranging from scratch.”
