Hot off the news that Wendy's ($WEN) will roll out breakfast starting in 2020, the company reported a good quarter at its earnings call today. The quarter resulted in $0.19 a share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.15 per share. There were a few reasons tossed around for the good news including an increase in stores, more people coming in to buy things like the spicy chicken sandwich, and royalty program members, but we like to dive into the alternative data to see the real story.

Store data

Turns out the real story is exactly what Wendy's said. The map above shows every store on the earth (a lot of Wendy's South East Asia, it turns out) and there was a slight increase in the total amount of locations in the last few months.

Employee data

Same with the employee count on LinkedIn, where Wendy's added 500 to its ranks in the last quarter alone.

It still pails in comparison to the almighty McDonald's ($MCD), and is half of what Burger King ($QSR) lists.

The number of job listings went down 7% since May.

Social media data

But the most interesting data we found is how far Wendy's Twitter account caught up to McDonald's. Whoever tweets for Wendy's has been doing an amazing job, because it's one of the spiciest, sauciest, sassiest corporate social media voices around.

But when it comes to Facebook, McDonald's leaves everyone in the dust.

About the Data: 

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

Further Reading: 

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