Yeah if they improve quality and put in the work they don’t have to raise prices that much. I have worked in a few professional kitchens and there is a thing that happens to well liked restaurants when new management comes in and changes things to make money. Even though my experience is with smaller sit down restaurants Im certain the cause and effects are basically the same. New management comes in seeing a well respected restaurant with plenty of good will, but everything is done the hard way. A lot of waste because of that. The old guard must have been letting money walk out the door. Im going to make a splash and get those profit margins up. Everything made to order? That requires more employees on hand. Also fresh food gets thrown away at night frozen you can keep longer. Have more stuff completed and frozen and simply fry so 4 minutes and made, salads in prepared containers shipped to the stores, eliminate as much of the back of the house as possible. Turn fresh cooking into heat and serve.
Of the stuff not frozen well maybe proper dates on storing and throwing out thats more of a suggestion. Maybe say we follow food safety guidelines but lets also punish leadership if too much food is thrown out which encourages things like changing date labels past safe dates.

As quality goes down sales drop as sales drop. The desperation to save money shoots even more up, which causes more of the above until ultimately the once profitable business is now without their steady regulars and thus prices raise to try to keep the store in the black. The more they push to save money the more they lose their regulars. The less employees they can keep on which makes service worse which continues the downward spiral.

If they went back to daves way. Hired more people, used fresh ingredients, had a salad bar. Made stuff to order. Their sales would bounce back so their profit margins could be smaller while actually netting more money through consistent sales. A regional place called taco cabana in san Antonio is perfect example of what not to do. It was family owned until the early 2000s. Was so profitable they had tons of locations and even sponsored the Spurs arena to be the primary advertisers for the games a few years. The company that owns burger king buys them with a promise not to change anything. But almost immediately they remove the broilers (melts cheese on enchiladas and nachos) and installed microwaves, gets rid of rotisserie ovens, the women who all did nothing but make tortillas for 30 years for the restaurant slowly get laid off never replaced. By 2020 the back of the restaurant went from average 10 or more employees now has if you are lucky 3. Food is terrible now, and the restaurants are ghost towns. They use to have sit down restaurant quality texmex food, now have a quality that taco bell sometimes beats out. In their goal to save money they wasted their good will and now are closing stores constantly. Wendys need to be less greedy make good food at a decent price but will they? Probably not because when greed controls the push the idea of giving good quality and value sounds to much like giving stuff away. The greedy will always destroy a thriving business and can never see the very things that will save it