Wendy's — Restaurant in North Olmsted

Stopped by this Wendy’s on Lorain Road after a long morning of errands. Pretty standard experience up front: fries were hot (salted evenly, which is rarer than you’d think), and my Dave’s Single was assembled with surprising symmetry. Drive-thru service was quick — under four minutes from speaker to sandwich. That’s solid throughput for a midday rush. Dining area was clean, Wi-Fi worked, and the drink machine wasn’t out of anything, including the elusive Hi-C Flashin’ Fruit Punch. So far, so good.

But then — and I don’t know what triggered it — maybe it was the overhead music, or the way the soda machine beeped — my brain hard-shifted gears into NOAA weather alert architecture. Specifically the SAME system: Specific Area Message Encoding. It’s the digital backbone of how emergency broadcasts are regionally targeted. Each SAME message is composed of a digital header burst (1050 Hz tone), followed by a voice message encoded with pre-programmed phoneme packets. The header includes originator codes (like WXR for National Weather Service), event codes (e.g., TOR for Tornado Warning), and six-digit FIPS codes to geofence the alert.

What’s fascinating is how these systems interface with legacy hardware. Devices like the Midland WR-100 or RadioShack 12-262 interpret the SAME burst via microcontroller — typically an 8-bit MCU like the Microchip PIC16F or Atmel ATmega series. These decode the binary-encoded preamble and initiate audible alerts depending on the user-defined area code matrix. The WR-100 also had a surface-mounted EEPROM storing custom area codes and alert filters — you could manually program up to 25 zones, if I recall correctly. This stuff still runs, by the way. A lot of infrastructure still leans on NOAAPort satellite uplinks and VHF band transmissions on 162.400–162.550 MHz. Incredible redundancy.

Anyway, mid-spicy nuggets, I’m thinking: these radios don’t get enough credit. They’re a blend of RF engineering, legacy digital signaling, and simple but effective embedded design. They use 1200 baud AFSK (audio frequency-shift keying) and still manage to interface with modern EAS systems, TV station relays, and even cellular push alert integrations via CAP (Common Alerting Protocol). And yet the average person just hears a beep and ignores it. Tragic.

Back to Wendy’s: my food stayed warm until the last bite, and the Frosty machine was operational, which is honestly more than I can say for the McDonald’s up the road. Tables were clean, lighting wasn’t blinding, and there’s a surprising number of outlets if you’re weirdly trying to charge your laptop during a Baconator. Would recommend.

TL;DR: Good fast food. Excellent operational efficiency. And if you’ve never taken apart a weather radio to dump its firmware and read the EEPROM over I2C, you’re missing out on one of the last great unencrypted public infrastructure systems still quietly humming along in...

Editing my review to a 3 star

Went today in the drive thru and got the number 1 single. I had to repeat 3 times I wanted my combo to be a medium, and they still charged me to have a small combo. I got to the window and mentioned how I said I wanted my combo to be a medium and the person at the window told the others "she just changed it to a medium" like no.. if you heard me the other 3 times, you would know this is what I asked for in the first place.

He then started to take other orders while he was busy scrolling on his cell phone. So, I am assuming due to being on his cellphone he probably is not getting orders correctly. I have worked fast food, do not scroll on your phone when taking orders... He looked to be maybe in his late teens maybe/ early 20s, light brown curly hair.. no name tag, so I can't exactly give you a name.

At the window I asked for ranch dressing, which the same person told his co workers while scrolling on his phone" they need ranch". I did not get it, so I had to go inside.

While inside, it took 15 mins for the cashier to "take my order" and there was only one small family of 3 before me. One lady did seem to have a pick up order, and walked out angry due to the service she received, since the front cashier was busy being slow, and rolling her eyes. That cashier did not seem to want to be there at all. She looked to be maybe 40s or 50s long hair up in a sort of bun, reddish a bit... she was wearing blue jean shorts and a blue Wendy's Shirt. No name tag, so not sure who she was. Even the family of 3 in front me of me was impatient with her.

You need to train your employees better.. period.. by the time I got back to my car after waiting 15 mins for a thing of ranch, my food was very luke warm.

This place use to be better. I am not sure who you hired, but seriously.. why is a worker on his phone while taking drive thru orders and messing orders up, and asking the customer to repeat themselves 3 times?

I still liked the food and ate it, but the customer service can be...

This location's drive thru is open until midnight, I pulled into the drive thru line a little after 11pm, there were 4 cars ahead of me, not moving at all. When it was finally my turn to place my order at the speaker, I heard silence, no one greeted me or asked me to hold on for a moment, or anything. The silence continued for about 8-10 minutes, I just sat there waiting because I figured they were very busy and trying to catch up with orders. I started saying "Hello, are you guys okay in there? Everyone alive? Are you open?" No reply. Another couple of minutes went by and I was done being patient, there were about 4 or 5 other cars waiting behind me. I turned around the drive thru curve and there were NO other cars in front of me. I pulled up to the window where a man who looked very annoyed to see me took his time to begrudgingly open the window. He told me they were changing out the register drawer and the young man who was working drive thru took his headset off. I don't know if this man was a manager, but a manager should always have a headset on regardless of who else is on drive thru. And a manager should never blame an employee, the manager is there to make sure everything is running smoothly. They took their time changing out the cash drawer and left me sitting at the window for another few minutes, and when he finally asked me what I wanted, I said I won't be ordering anything. I told him I hope that in the future, if they're very busy doing something on the inside, they would at least greet the customer at the speaker and ask them to please hold on a moment. They had a long line of cars waiting for nearly 20 minutes while a staff of at least 4 (from whom I saw at the window) were completely ignoring the drive thru. The man I spoke with at the window was rude and unprofessional. I understand fast food jobs can suck, but if you're working in the customer service industry, greet your customers and communicate with them in a professional manner, or get a different job that...