In our recent interview with Denver mayoral candidate Aurelio Martinez, one detail stuck out: He talked about how Denver’s 16th Street Mall once boasted the largest Wendy’s in the country.
Of course, we had to know more, and Denverite reader Ryan Frazer was able to help.
He dug into the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection and eventually found a Sept. 29, 1979, article that made the claim in the Rocky Mountain News: “Wendy’s to open its largest hamburger shop Saturday.”
The restaurant, at Champa Centre at 16th and Champa streets, seated 375 people and offered 3,550 square feet of dining space. That’s six to twelve times the capacity of Wendy’s modern designs, which increasingly target drive-through and pickup orders.
The shop was owned by Wendy’s of Denver Inc., whose owner, John Bertoncino Jr., told the Rocky that it was one of seven Wendy’s to open in the metro that year.
The store hired 120 staffers. And instead of the single check-out line that was usual at the time, there were three. Three! One handled carry-out orders and the other two were for customers eating in the restaurant.
That same year, the Rocky quoted Wendy’s CEO Dave Thomas as saying: “All we want is all the hamburger business in the world.”
His dream: Wendy’s having 6,000 stores, the same number of Chevrolet showrooms the United States had at the time.
Wendy’s ballooned to more than 7,000 restaurants around the world but is currently seeing a drop in revenue, according to a quarterly report. U.S. sales declined by more than 10% in the last quarter of 2025, though international sales went up, with 59 new restaurants globally.
The company is planning to close as many as several hundred of its U.S. restaurants in the first half of 2026 and redirect its spending toward international growth.
The company also closed more than 200 eateries in 2024, including at least three Denver locations.
We still haven’t figured out the exact year the 16th Street Wendy’s closed. These days, the Champa Centre offers a variety of ground-floor retail in the building, and like much of 16th Street, plenty of empty space to rent … enough space, some say, for a giant Wendy’s.
