tesg's guide to big chain road food consumption

CHAIN -- Denny's
Owner -- Denny's Corporation (NASDAQ Smallcap: DENN)
Primary Operating Region -- Nationwide
Number of Locations -- 1,585 (March, 2005)

There's a guy with a website called "Project Denny's".  His ultimate goal is to get something free from every Denny's there is and occasionally eat at them.  His travels and visits are revealed on his website, which I highly recommend for hours of entertaining reading and picture-viewing.  Truth be known, I could do several similar websites along the same line but with different chains.

Until its recent closure (we lost our last two) we had a Denny’s that still had flame-orange vinyl seats and white ball lighting.  It wasn’t remodeled once since it opened.  It was the ultimate in retro not because that’s fashionable, but because the company was too cheap to remodel.  Proving once again that the way to be cool in this town is completely by accident.

We had three Denny’s when I moved there in 1993.  The first to close did so the morning a waitress was found brutally murdered in the bathroom.  They never re-opened.  (The company said they were planning to close it anyway.)  The second and third closed just recently for no apparent reason…they were always busy, even though the service was terrible and equipment breakdowns meant not all of the menu was available.  Not one dime was ever put into the stores unless it absolutely had to be.

Denny's started as Danny's Donuts in the spring of 1953 in Lakewood, CA. Danny's evolved into a coffee shop with several menu items and later became Denny's.

The Denny’s of today for those markets who DO maintain and remodel are under the current concept of the “Denny’s Diner”.  The diner theme is pretty much what you’d expect, and the menu is all-American...eggs, pancakes, burgers, and sandwiches.  Like all of the “family restaurant” segment players, Denny’s goes through cycles where the menu is very good, and the menu is very bad.  The quality of the service you receive depends on the particular location’s management…it can be good, it can be horrible.  But that’s true about most of the family restaurant segment.   Thus it’s almost impossible to state whether or not you’ll like a family restaurant chain across the board. 

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