Denny's

Denny's

Company type	Public (Nasdaq: DENN)
Industry	Casual dining restaurant
Founded	1953
Headquarters	Spartanburg, South Carolina, U.S.
Key people	Harold Butler, founder
Website	www.dennys.com

Denny's is the largest full-service family restaurant chain in the United States. It operates over 2,500 restaurants in the United States (including Puerto Rico), Canada, Curaçao, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Japan, Mexico, and New Zealand. Denny's is known for its 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year operations, serving breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert around the clock. Many of their restaurants are located in proximity to freeway exits and in service areas of small towns and remote areas. Unlike many other restaurant chains, Denny's does not close on holidays or nights, except where required by law.

History

A Denny's restaurant in Tokyo, Japan.

HalloweenPancake　Denny's restaurant in Tokyo

File:Denny's Sign.JPG

The neon sign of a Denny's in San Clemente, California

Denny's was founded under the name Danny's Donuts in 1953 by Harold Butler in Lakewood, California. Butler expanded to 20 restaurants by 1959, when he renamed the chain to Denny's to avoid confusion with another chain "Doughnut Dan's". The business continued to grow and by 1981, there were over 1,000 restaurants in all 50 U.S. states. In 1977, Denny's introduced the still-popular Grand Slam breakfast. In 1994, Denny's became the largest corporate sponsor of Save the Children, a national charity.

Denny's headquarters were located in Irvine, California, until 1991. At that time, the main office was moved to the Spartanburg, South Carolina, headquarters of the parent company Trans World Corporation that acquired Denny's in 1987. Eventually, Denny's operations dominated the parent company to such an extent that Trans World Corporation, after several name changes, became Denny's Corporation. It now trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol Nasdaq: DENN. Today, Denny's operates about 1,600 restaurants in 49 U.S. states (Wyoming is the only state without a Denny's), Canada and Mexico. There are also about 578 Denny's restaurants in Japan operated under a license by a subsidiary of Seven & I Holdings.

For much of its history, Denny's was notable for offering a free meal to anyone on their birthday. The offer only included a limited number of meal options from a special birthday menu. The promotional ritual ceased in 1993, though occasionally individual franchises will continue the tradition.

Competitors

Competing restaurants include IHOP, Shoney's, Bob Evans, Waffle House, Cracker Barrel, Eat'n Park, Perkins,Golden Griddle, Steak n Shake, and Village Inn.

Denny's also competes with restaurant chains throughout various regions of the country.

Controversy

Racial discrimination lawsuits

During the early 1990s, Denny's was involved in a series of discrimination lawsuits involving several cases of servers denying or providing inferior service to minorities, especially African American customers.

These are some of the most notable incidents involving racial discrimination at Denny's:

• In San Jose, California, several black teenagers were refused service unless they agreed to pay in advance (Smith, 1996). This was the first recorded incident of such events.

• Six Asian-American Syracuse University students visited a local Denny’s restaurant late at night. They waited over 30 minutes as white patrons were regularly served, seated, and offered more helpings. They began to complain to management and to their server regarding the situation. They were then forced to leave the establishment by two security guards (called by Denny’s management). Then, according to the students, a group of white men came out of Denny's and attacked the group, shouting racial epithets. Several of the students were beaten into unconsciousness.

• Six African-American Secret Service agents visited a Denny’s restaurant in Annapolis, Maryland. They were forced to wait an hour for service while their white companions were seated immediately upon entering (Guillermo, 1997).

• An African-American Denny’s customer was told that he and his friends had to pay up front at the counter upon ordering their meals. He questioned the waitress: "We asked the waitress about it and she said some black guys had been in earlier who made a scene and walked out without paying their bill. So the manager now wanted all blacks to pay up front." (Ferraro, 1995).

In 1994, Denny's settled a class action lawsuit filed by thousands of black customers who had been refused service, forced to wait longer, or pay more than white customers. The $54.4 million settlement was the largest and broadest under Federal public-accommodations laws established 30 years ago to end segregation in restaurants and public spaces.

After the $54.4 million settlement, Denny's created a racial sensitivity training program for all its employees. Denny's has also made efforts at improving its public relations image by featuring African Americans in many of its commercials, including one featuring Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford (both actors from the popular The Jeffersons television show). In 2001, Denny's was chosen by Fortune magazine as the "Best Company for Minorities."

Ehrenreich

In the controversial book Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author included her experience working in a restaurant chain known for its line of breakfast foods. To avoid lawsuits, due to the descriptions of less than desirable work conditions, she mentions the name of the restaurant under the pseudonym "Jerry's". Readers have speculated that Denny's is the restaurant chain she is describing. The Jerry's chain of restaurants was folded into Denny's in 1989.

Dateline NBC report

In October 2004, Dateline NBC aired a segment titled "Dirty Dining." This segment examined the 10 most popular family and casual dining chains in the United States, including Bob Evans, Red Lobster, Waffle House, Chili's, Ruby Tuesday, IHOP, Applebee's, TGI Friday's, Outback Steakhouse, and Denny's. As part of the segment, the producers examined the health inspection records for 100 restaurants over 15 months and totaled all of the critical violations, or violations that can result in adverse effects to the customers' health.

Denny's had the fewest violations of the 10 chains evaluated by Dateline and was the only one to average fewer than one violation per restaurant. Denny's and Waffle House were the only two chains studied that operate chain-wide 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year (many IHOPs operate 24 hours as well) — an important factor to consider, as around-the-clock restaurants generally gather more health code violations. (Waffle House ranked the worst of the 10 chains examined.) Denny's, however, did not seem to be affected by the lack of downtime. Denny's attributes this relative success to its adherence to the principles of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) — the science of food safety.

The "Denny's Diner" prototype

In 1998, Denny's reinvented its image and launched Denny's Diner. The "Diner" was a "googie" or Retro-style restaurant, featuring bright red, green, and yellow colors, jukeboxes, lava lamps, retro-style paintings, etc. The company originally planned to change every Denny's restaurant to Denny's Diner, but financing prohibited it. Eventually, the general Denny's Diner concept was merged into the typical Denny's, requiring all locations to have '50s-themed interiors. There are, however, still locations that call themselves "Denny's Classic Diner."

Denny's in popular culture

• In the 1994 Christmas movie The Santa Clause, the characters played by Tim Allen and Eric Lloyd eat at a Denny's restaurant on Christmas Eve after Allen's character singes their home-cooked turkey dinner. He describes the chain as an "American institution," a line that was immediately followed by an interior shot of the restaurant focusing on Japanese diners.
• A Rush Limbaugh parody commercial features "Reginald Denny's", based on an incident during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. It includes the announcer calling the restaurant "Reginald Lenny's" (before being punched), which was inspired by an elderly customer calling the real chain "Lenny's" in the real commercial.
• In 1994, Buckshot Lefonque recorded an instrumental song called "Breakfast at Denny's" which featured small excerpts from Jay Leno's routine on the early-1990s discrimination incident. "Denny's say that they don't discriminate, but you gotta wonder when that chef's hat is pointed..."
• In the television series Family Guy, Peter decides to punish his body by eating at Denny's. In another episode, Brian is shown as overreacting and yelling at a crying baby due to his food being overcooked. In another episode titled "Da Boom", the family establishes a new town after Quahog is destroyed during Y2K. Chris Griffin tells the family to build "two Denny's so we can always say, 'Let's not go there. Let's go to the good one.'"
• Bubba "Whoop-Ass" Wilson of The Monsters in the Morning wrote and sang a song about the diner called "Drunk at Denny's."
• On the Simpsons' episode "Bart Sells His Soul", Ned Flanders expects people at Denny's to have foul language.

External links

• Denny's website
• Denny's Japan website
• Project Denny's: a Denny's travelogue