Everything You Need To Know About The Wendy's Baconator

In the fast-food world, Wendy's sets itself apart with its friendly red-headed and smiling mascot Wendy, its famously sassy social media persona, and its bacon-fueled menu and stunts. Wendy's iconic Baconator sandwich is a masterclass of the bacon cheeseburger form, a fan-favorite and a highly marketable sandwich. The Baconator firmly sits in the proud carnivore diet, stacking two of Wendy's signature square quarter-pound beef patties and six pieces of Applewood smoked bacon, all covered in melted American cheese. Heinz ketchup and mayo decorate the bun, rounding the full sandwich out to a whopping 1010 calories.

The Baconator has even started a family with its Son of Baconator, a smaller version of itself featuring a lighter bite and fewer calories. Though some have found the Son to be a pretender on the Wendy's menu, secretly boasting similar stats to another sandwich on the menu and at a higher price point.

Swamped in a culinary world obsessed with creative ways to cook and eat bacon, Wendy's has always reliably stuck with and even doubled-down on the classic bacon cheeseburger.

Although the Baconator feels like the most high-profile item on the Wendy's menu, the sandwich did not actually exist until 2007. That's 38 years after the company's founding in 1969. According to official Wendy's lore, founder Dave Thomas wanted to get into the bacon game early in the company's life but was working on sourcing from the right partner. Thomas found that partner in Ohio-based Sugardale Foods in 1982, and Wendy's introduced its first bacon Cheeseburger to the menu later that year. Sugardale Foods still provides bacon made from fresh-cut pork bellies to be cooked fresh by Wendy's employees to this day.

After Thomas's death in 2002, the Wendy's company revamped its image and marketing with some high-profile developments including the establishment of Wendy's Wonderful Kids program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption as well as the Wendy's kids menu 2004. The company went all-in on Bacon when it introduced the Baconator to its menu in August 2007.

Facing competition over healthy choices in the fast food burger space, Wendy's introduced the Son of Baconator in 2012. The burger featured smaller patties and 300 fewer calories than its 960-calorie father. Following the success of the Baconator, Wendy's has run yearly promotions and variations of the burger including Baconator Pringles and Baconator Fries.

Baconator fans can rejoice in the knowledge that (almost) no matter what time of day, Wendy's is reliably serving up your favorite bacon-layered burger. You can order the Baconator, or its son, for lunch starting at 10:30 a.m. at most locations, on through dinner time and the late-night munchies cravings. Sadly, Wendy's does not offer any version of the Baconator for the true carnivorous night owls past its regular closing time at midnight.

However, the hungriest of early birds can enjoy the Breakfast Baconator starting at 6:30 a.m. The sandwich swaps Wendy's signature square beef patties for a single grilled breakfast sausage, and features american cheese, swiss cheese sauce and of course, multiple layers of bacon. Like all of Wendy's breakfast sandwiches, the Breakfast Baconator includes a fresh-cracked egg, but it is notably the only one served on a traditional burger bun. At 710 calories, it's a hefty sandwich for the start of the day, compared to the Son of Baconator at 630 calories.

NASCAR driver and self-proclaimed "Mayor of Throttleville" Noah Gragson drove a car featuring Wendy's logos and Baconator imagery in the first-ever NASCAR Chicago Street Race Weekend in July of 2023. Gragson's No. 42 Chevrolet Camaro featured Wendy's red pig-tailed mascot on the front of the car, along with "THE BACONATOR” inscribed across its nose. Massive Baconator sandwiches decorated the sides of the vehicle, and bacon racing stripes fittingly stretched long-ways across its roof. Gragson and his Chevy have represented Wendy's before, sporting similar logos and burger imagery on "THE BEEF" at the Daytona 500 as well as "THE BIGGIE" at the Talladega Superspeedway. The Chicago Street Race was a big deal for NASCAR and Wendy's, as the race was the first of its kind for the city and Wendy's even ran a deal with DoorDash offering free Baconators and Breakfast Baconators to cheer on Gragson on the day of the race. Unfortunately, Gragson did not perform particularly well in the race, finishing 25th out of 37 drivers and crashing THE BACONATOR several times.

NASCAR and Gragson's team, Legacy Motor Club, later suspended Gragson due to non-Baconator-related code of conduct violations.

Facing competition over healthy choices in the fast food burger space, Wendy's introduced the Son of Baconator in 2012. The burger features smaller square patties, called Jr. Hamburger Patties, which are smaller than the regular patties. The Son of Baconator also only includes four strips of Applewood smoked bacon, two fewer than its father.

Wendy's menu lists the Son of Baconator at 630 calories, which is roughly 300 fewer than its 960-calorie father. Customers looking for healthier choices might look just a bit lower on the burger menu, perhaps at the similar Bacon Double Stack, which contains around 440 calories. Like the Baconator burgers, the Bacon Double Stack features two square beef patties. However, it also contains bacon, pickles, onion, ketchup, and mustard.

The Wendy's Son of Baconator is more expensive than the Bacon Double Stack. Additionally, the latter includes more toppings, so, for customers looking for those toppings, the Bacon Double Stack may be a better deal. Although the more expensive Son of Baconator comes with more bacon, it's essentially cheaper to order a Bacon Double Stack and pay around one dollar more to add more bacon from the modification menu.

Among its many innovations, the Wendy's brand prides itself in being technically inclined, constantly seeking to improve its service and ordering processes. Wendy's even claims to have invented the first modern drive-through window in 1970. In these pursuits, Wendy's has developed its own mobile ordering app and, more recently, an automated drive-thru ordering system using generative artificial intelligence.

For this new system, Wendy's partnered with Google Cloud, an advanced artificial intelligence technology developed by Google, to create a program named "Wendy's FreshAI." Wendy's FreshAI was designed to feel like interacting with a human crew member, taking accurate food orders, and answering any questions a customer may have. 

The technology really shines in its ability to improvise on the fly with customers as a human would, meaning it is supposed to be able to understand an order without the use of specific keywords. Of course, the system should have no problem with a trademark item like the Baconator, but the artificial ordering system is also smart enough to know that a "chocolate milkshake" is synonymous with a Wendy's chocolate "Frosty."

On the back end, Wendy's investment in artificial intelligence technology allows for a more agile human workforce within the store. Since Wendy's data reports that 75-80% of customers choose the drive-thru as their preferred ordering channel, that frees up human workers to focus on delivering fresh, quality Baconators and other items at greater volume.

In 2020, Wendy's teamed up with Pringles to create a new flavor of potato chip modeled after the Baconator. The limited-time chip compressed all the flavors from the beef patties, bacon strips, American cheese, and even the bun and ketchup into a crispy, bite-sized morsel stacked up in the Pringles can. Adding to the kaleidoscopic layers of flavor, Wendy's even recommended customers dip the Pringle into a Frosty milkshake or top an actual Baconator with a crunchy layer of chips.

Wendy's and Pringles furthered their partnership with an additional benefit to customers who purchased their Baconator Pringles, hidden beneath the lid of every can. Each purchase came with a code to redeem a free Baconator, Son of Baconator, or Breakfast Baconator for use with the Wendy's app via mobile order.

Wendy's partnered with Pringles once again in 2021 to produce a chip flavored after its spicy chicken sandwich. The spicy chip packed all the flavor of chicken and bun into one crispy bite, and once again came with a code for a free spicy chicken sandwich.

Wendy's added Baconator Fries to its menu in 2015. Wendy's still offers the nacho-like side dish, which features a french fry base topped with warm cheese sauce, shredded cheddar, and the same crispy Applewood smoked bacon that tops its namesake sandwich. 

Wendy's Baconator Fries are different from the chain's Bacon Pub fries (a previous entry into Wendy's french fry experimentation that was coated in warm beer cheese sauce). Although the company offers a Hot & Crispy Fry Guarantee – which equates to a free replacement for any french fries not delivered hot and crispy on purchase — this particular offer could be a difficult feat to accomplish in the case of these two fry dishes, which come topped with cheese sauce.

On its pretty extensive sides menu, Wendy's also offers a more traditional baked potato topped with Baconator-like cheese sauce and bacon bits. At some locations, other Baconator Fries variations exist, including a jalapeño-topped version of the Baconator Fries.

In 2022, Wendy's Canada added the Blazin' Baconator to its menu. The Blazin' Baconator included many of the same features as the original — two quarter-pound square beef patties and six strips of Applewood smoked bacon, covered with melted cheese — but added a jalapeno kick to the cheese and smothered the bun with sweet-heat-seasoned mayonnaise.

Wendy's Canada also introduced the Breakfast Baconator, a variation on the lunch sandwich that uses breakfast sausage patties instead of beef and adds an egg, to its stores at the same time and it remained a mainstay of Wendy's menu. While the Blazin Baconator was only available for September and October of 2022, the experiment set a trend for Wendy's to move forward with bolder and spicier menu items.

Wendy's has always been a trailblazer of spicy menu items in the fast food world. The chain added a spicy chicken sandwich to its menu in 1995, becoming the first business of its kind to add such an item to the menu. The Spicy Chicken Sandwich, which was topped with mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato, became a permanent menu item in 1996.

Wendy's accompanying Spicy Chicken Nuggets were not as popular, leading the company to discontinue the item in 2017, except for in a few select cities. Fortunately, the spicy nuggets were not fated to join the ranks of discontinued Wendy's items we won't be seeing again. In 2019, Wendy's brought the nuggets back to the menu permanently.

For hungry fans who wish to enjoy a Baconator in another dimension of existence, Wendy's introduced a virtual reality version of its famous sandwich in 2022. In fact, users of Meta's Horizon Worlds, a virtual reality platform from the creators of Facebook, can visit an entire virtual Wendy's location within the Horizon world.

Dubbed the Wendyverse, the online location is actually a beefed-up Wendy's village with a true-to-life replica of a store at its center. It includes the Wendyverse Partnership Plaza, where athletically inclined players can shoot hoops at the Buck BiscuitDome, sinking a virtual Baconator down a floating basket instead of a basketball. Wendy's actually ran an accompanying promotion with the release of the Wendyverse that rewarded talented burger shooters with the reward of a Sausage or Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit for just "a buck," in real life.

The Wendyverse also offers opportunities to interact with characters, including virtual employees and even the mascot, Wendy. The virtual world allows for a creative design outside the limits of reality, including some wacky features like a circling blimp that is actually a massive loaded baked potato. Unfortunately, the Wendyverse does require a Meta Quest 2 headset and a Meta account to explore.

The Baconator has long been the favorite sandwich of many a human customer, but now, thanks to a fisherman on TikTok, we know that fish and lobster enjoy it too. Maine lobster fisherman Blake Haass runs a TikTok account on which he regularly films himself fishing for lobsters and other aquatic catches, often using popular fast food items as bait, just to see what bites. In 2022, Haass discovered that lobsters will bite for the Wendy's Baconator.

In the two-part video, Haass hosted a head-to-head competition (dubbed "Will it fish?") between the Wendy's Baconator and the McDonald's Big Mac. Haass loaded up two different traps, also known as "lobster pots" in the fishing industry, with one of each sandwich and dropped them in the water for 24 hours. 

@blakehaass_

Replying to @Timothy Smith Will It Fish?McDonald’s vs Wendy’s haul back! #willitfish #wif #lobster #fish #ocean

♬ Censor Beep Bleep (Version 3) [TV Television Censorship Bleep Out Censored] [Sound Effect] – Finnolia Sound Effects

In the follow-up video, Haass pulls up the Big Mac pot first, discovering a meager catch of one "short" lobster and one baby lobster. For the uninitiated, Maine's lobstering laws dictate that the minimum body shell measurement for a legal lobster catch is 3 and 1/4 inches. If the lobsters are shorter than this, they are "short" lobster and can't be kept. 

The Baconator pot yields another two "short" lobsters, technically giving Wendy's the victory, but Haass is shocked to discover a huge monkfish accompanying the sandwiches. "Apparently he likes the Wendy's Baconators," Haass declares, showing the camera the fish's big mouth, and adding: "Off of a freaking hamburger, how cool is that?"

Independent baseball team The Boise Hawks have temporarily rebranded as The Boise Baconators as part of a partnership with Wendy's. The team, which is part of the Pioneer Baseball League in Idaho, first partnered with Wendy's for its 2022 season to sell ticket packages that included reserved seats to a choice of five games plus a $10 gift card to Wendy's.

The Hawks swapped out their typical white jerseys for orange and black, emblazoned with a bold "Baconators" across the chest, and topped their heads in black hats with an actual picture of the burger on them. Jim and Kathy Taggart, the owners of 15 local Wendy's restaurants in Boise, spoke for the brand saying that the partnership came from Wendy's wanting to give back to their fans and community. Kathy Taggart especially claimed deep baseball roots, as she is the daughter of Harmon Killebrew, a well-known Major League Baseball player.

The newly rebranded Boise Baconators toured around local Wendy's locations, meeting fans and showing off their swanky new uniforms. As an added bonus, the league even promised that if the Baconators scored five or more runs, all fans in attendance would receive a coupon for a buy one get one Baconator or Breakfast Baconator. The Baconators won several games and delivered more than five points at every game, making good on the promised Wendy's Baconators for their fans.

The beefy hand of Wendy's reaches all the way around the globe, slinging Baconators, among its other classic menu items, even in Japan. Wendy's Japan purchased Japanese fast food chain First Kitchen in June 2016, which included a notable real estate acquisition of 136 brick-and-mortar restaurants. The newly branded Wendy's First Kitchen offers a hybrid menu of recognizable burgers, french fries, chicken nuggets, and even Wendy's signature chili, but also offers some exclusive menu items only available in Japan.

Along with the famed Baconator and Breakfast Baconator, Wendy's First Kitchen offers a delicious-sounding Truffle & Mushroom Melt Burger, Teriyaki Burger, and a selection of egg-topped burgers. Far distinct from the American Wendy's chain, Wendy's First Kitchen also offers Italian-inspired pasta dishes including carbonara, Shrimp Avocado Genovese pasta, and an item called Addictive Delicious Bolognese. The pasta menu may seem far removed from the comfort of a traditional Wendy's menu, but the Baconator spirit even creeps into these dishes, like with the Japanese Wendy's menu item of Tomato Sauce Pasta with Mozzarella and Bacon.

The fast-food burger game is a competitive one, with chains fighting to attract customers. With the success of Wendy's Baconator, it should come as no surprise that pretenders would emerge. Burger King — one of Wendy's rivals –has been slinging the Bacon King, a burger that is a little suspiciously similar to the Baconator, since 2016.

The Baconator formula isn't exactly a hard one to crack, much less patent. It doesn't take a burger scientist to determine that beef, cheese, and bacon work together on a sandwich. But it's Wendy's marketing and personality around its flagship burger that give the Baconator its status and clout, and Burger King's Bacon King just doesn't put in the same work there. 

The sandwich is essentially the same, featuring two quarter-pound beef patties, slices of American cheese, and six strips of bacon, as well as ketchup and mayonnaise. The one notable distinct difference between the two burgers is that Burger King's buns are studded with sesame seeds.

Of course, Burger King has more fun marketing its Whopper, a beef burger with no cheese or bacon and a lot more vegetables as toppings. Burger King even claims that the Whopper is "America's favorite burger," showing at least its own preference for this burger over the Bacon King. It's a shameless knock-off, but a Baconator-like sandwich answers a bacon-shaped gap on the Burger King menu that all fast food chains should hope to fill.