Wendy’s Company ,The Wendy’s method of delivering a significant sales increase at the same time on a year-to-year basis. The consistent growth in sales demonstrates the brand’s ability to connect with our customers. It has led to the fourth straight quarter with double-digit worldwide same-restaurant sales, on a two-year basis. These results show how our top-quality food that offers value and convenience continues to meet their customers’ expectations, which makes Wendy’s the Wendy’s brand more popular than ever before.
The third quarter of the year in the third quarter, our traffic and dollar growth were as the best performers in our set of competitors and we also kept our daily dollar and traffic share in the QSR Burger segment across the U.S. On the breakfast side we introduced French Toast Sticks, our first major menu item across the U.S. that resulted in an impressive increase in U.S. Breakfast sales during the quarter.
We’ve received a overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from our clients and this is a clear indication of how much growth is in front of us in the breakfast hour. The digital momentum of our business remained high as we produced a worldwide digital sales that was around 10% and we are expecting to increase by the increased emphasis on delivery and digital marketing as we close the year. We are determined to drive the restaurant model’s economics by implementing three long-term growth initiatives: to expand our breakfast daypart, increase our digital operations and increase our footprint globally. We have joined forces with our franchisees to form a system that will continue to grow over the next few years.
We saw significant increases in sales at the same restaurant across the globe on a year-to-year basis during the third quarter, as the international as well as U.S. business continued to be competitive. Our international business had another impressive quarter, with a wide range of accomplishments, marking the sixth consecutive quarter with double-digit two-year and one-year same-restaurant sales growth , with the two-year growth rate reaching more than 25 percent. We continue to witness positive performance throughout the Latin America and Caribbean region with markets such as those in the Bahamas along with that of the Dominican Republic, showcasing remarkable growth year-over-year.
This increase was further boosted by the ongoing growth in Canada and Canada, which is where we are growing in traffic share and dollar value faster that any other of our QSR competitors in the burger category due in part due to our breakfast launch. We’re pleased that our U.S. business delivered same-restaurant sales of 6.4 percent on a year-to-date basis, accelerating by more than 4 percentage points over the previous quarter, as we maintained our high market share and traffic health position in the QSR Burger category. Our success in delivering strong performance is an indication of our well-balanced marketing schedule that led to a gradual increase in the number of customers during Q2 and Q3 addition to a robust average check, backed by our strategic pricing actions.
Products
In the course of the quarter, we continued advertise delicious products at different prices and occasions. This included the ongoing promotion in Strawberry Frosty, our compelling and reusable price of $5 Biggie Bag along with the relaunched of the well beloved Pretzel Bacon Pub delighting our customers with a cult favorite for the fall season. We are planning to increase sales by launching our new Italian mozzarella sandwiches as well as our Peppermint Frosty. This will set us up for an excellent finish for the season. We’ll now turn our attention to our breakfast offering. We’re still delighted with our breakfast offerings in Canada and striving to establish the habit of breakfast and offer the Canadian customers the premium service they’re entitled to.
It’s still early on our breakfast adventure, however, we are convinced that the introduction of this morning meal will result in substantial sales and profit in the Canadian franchisees. We’re now looking towards the U.S. We’re incredibly satisfied with the results that we have seen from Our French Toast Sticks launched. The sweet, delicious breakfast snack is fast becoming our top choice.
The top breakfast item. The launch has helped us keep the morning meal dollar part in the QSR Burger category, and resulted in an impressive increase within U.S. breakfast sales over the time of the quarter with sales per week averaging $3000 as we finished Q3. This accomplishment, in conjunction with the recent launch of our $3 croissant campaign will help us in getting to our target of a weekly average breakfast sales of $3,000 sales by the end of the year.
We are determined to make the $16 million investment we made in breakfast advertising this year in the same way as we are determined to fight to get our share in QSR breakfast market. We maintained our digital momentum through the third quarter, with our global sales mix that remained high at about 10 percent. The mix of digital sales across the globe was about 15%, which was boosted by outstanding results across all regions. We anticipate that these numbers will increase even more over the next few quarters, when we launch our program for loyalty in Canada just a few days ago which we’re extremely happy about.
Growth of the Company
Within the U.S., digital sales mix increased through the entire quarter resulting with nearly 9.5 percent of our overall sales. Our growth was fueled by numerous successful delivery promotions which we continue to build on during the fourth quarter, when the demand for delivery typically peak. Additionally, we saw a sequential growth in the number of rewards members by 10%, which is an all-time high. We’re determined to expand delivery options and mobile ordering accessibility and efficiency. as well as improving our user experience as well as designing our one-to-one marketing strategy to help us grow our digital business even more across the world.
We are making progress toward our global expansion plan during the 3rd quarter. we have opened more than 200 new restaurants in the course of the year. I am extremely proud of our staff and franchisees who have once again achieved expansion in this challenging situation. As we near the end of the year we’ve gained more insight into certain factors that are shaping what we plan for our fourth quarter.
We are now anticipating a transition to approximately 30 dark kitchens to India until 2023. The timing change was agreed upon by Rebel Foods one of our franchisees in the India market. They have has successfully operated around 90 dark kitchens at present. They are experimenting with an omnichannel model by creating traditional eateries in the near future that will later be complemented by additional dark kitchens. In addition, we are seeing delays in development which are affecting the entire industry, leading to a small decrease on REEF deliveries kitchens opening, and within the U.S.
traditional development to 2022. Because of the changes we expect 2022 to see a growth rate between 2% and 2.5 percent, mostly resulting from the decrease in restaurants that are not traditional. We believe that concepts that aren’t traditional will be an integral part of our growth strategy in the future and will be focused and strategic in the way we bring these ideas to reality. The 2022 outlook for unit growth is continuing to indicate an increase in the growth of our net units over our historic rate of 1 to 2percent.
We anticipate that our net growth to continue to increase until 2025. Our team has continued to make progress toward strengthening our long-term development pipeline during the 3rd quarter. We have continued the U.K. expansion with nine traditional restaurants operated by a company as well as a total of 25 restaurants operating in the market by quarter’s end. We also anticipate that the first traditional franchisees to start opening restaurants which will include our first drive-thru location , in the coming months.
