Here at Urban Cowboy Hobbies we take great pride in our research team and for good reason. I’m not sure how many other research committees would come up with such a curve-ball answer for this question. Yet even with this off the wall attitude, Dave Thomas is undoubtedly a contender for the title of GOAT.

For the uninitiated, Dave Thomas is the founder of the best fast food restaurant around, Wendy’s. Adopted as a baby, Dave lost his Adoptive mother at the age of 5. Surrounded by tragedy, he and his Dad hit the road, traveling the country, eating burgers and finding work wherever it could be found. At the age of 15, Thomas dropped out of school and started work at a restaurant named The Hobby House in Indiana, falling in love with the restaurant business.

Unfortunately for Dave, the Korean War broke out and he joined the army, becoming a mess sergeant in Germany, feeding thousands of people a day. The knowledge this prospective GOAT earned in Germany went a long way in his future as a fast food Mogul.

After the war, Dave Thomas returned to The Hobby House where he met two people that would change his life forever, his soon to be wife Lorraine, and the iconic Colonel Sanders. Working with The Colonel, Thomas moved to Columbus, Ohio in an attempt to turn around some failing restaurants. Even in the face of The Colonel’s doubt, Thomas pulled off a miracle and saved the restaurants and earning a hefty stake in KFC in the process.

Selling his stock in KFC, Dave Thomas was able to open his own restaurant, Wendy’s, named after his youngest daughter. The company was founded on the simple motto, Quality is our Recipe. A motto that has stuck to this day. The people of the 70’s and 80’s knew quality hamburgers when they had them, and as such Wendy’s exploded in growth, opening 1000 restaurants in 100 months, and then another 2000 in the two years to follow.

As the 80’s drew to a close, Wendy’s sales began to dip and the long retired Dave Thomas was called back to the plate to rescue our beloved Wendy’s. Bringing his “Mop bucket Attitude” this GOAT appeared in over 800 TV ads, a record that still stands today. These ads brought Wendy’s back from the brink and to brand new heights.

After this legend of fast food had finished building and rebuilding his empire, he returned to high school, finally getting his degree almost 50 years after he began. An American icon, a testament to hard work and conviction, Dave Thomas undoubtedly stands as the Greatest Restaurateur of All Time. Dying in 2002 at the age of 69, the world still enjoys his tasty hamburgers to this day. In fact the UBH team went to Wendy’s last night and enjoyed a Nacho Cheese Burger, something that I doubt any other fast food chain could pull off half as well.

Editor’s note: Dave Thomas was a legend, a titan of American Fast Food. But is he the GOAT of GOATs? tune in next week as we dive into our next subject, American President Bill Clinton.

In the MMORPG Old school RuneScape there is a quest named “a simple favor” in this quest the player must perform a small favor for a character in the game. This small favor turns out to be more than meets the eye as the player is led on a wild goose chase around the world in order to complete this “simple favor”.

Like the simple favor in RuneScape, i ruminated on a simple question this morning on my run. Who is the GOAT? The question was born when Kenny Chesney’s “When the Sun Goes Down” started playing on my headphones. My initial thought was that Kenny Chesney must be the GOAT of country music. This thought then grew to another question, who is the GOAT of all musical artists? Then, who is the GOAT in entertainment? The natural conclusion of this series of questions was the simple question I aim to answer with a series of blog posts I call GOATuesday. Every Tuesday, please tune in as I try to answer the question: Who is the GOAT?

The format of this series will be simple, I’ve asked the members of the UrbanCowboyHobbies executive research committee to provide their answer. I intend to dissect these research findings weekly, going over each candidate’s résumé for GOAT.

This series will start this Tuesday with our first subject still up in the air! To decide who we cover in our first deep dive, I have opened up a poll below to my loyal readers to vote!

I chose the 2 below candidates as I thought either would be a great starting point. But you can rest assured because while these two titans may seem untouchable, many of the other candidates we found in our research are just as worthy of the title: GOAT.

Closing remarks: look forward to the first installment of this series on Tuesday. If you have any other picks for GOAT that you feel need consideration please comment below.