Company practices and procedures demonstrates little respect to employees. Overworked and extremely underpaid. - Server Denny's Employee Review

2.0
Apr 5, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Hmmmmm. It is a job.

Cons

Where do I start? The company mandates countless hours of E-Learning to force employees to the Denny's policies and procedures. They constantly advocate the "Power of We," which is supposed to be the "family" atmosphere of teamwork approach. However, the whole concept completely contradicts actual practices and procedures. Our location was recently remodeled and the store looks great. However, the design is so abusive to the servers and demonstrates absolutely no respect or concern for the increased work load the new layout demands. Bus tubs and carts are gone forcing servers to haul large trays of dirty dishes to the dishroom, where they then have to clear each dish and sort into tubs. Coffee stations are gone, too causing servers to double more trips to the kitchen, which is a mess from all of the staff activity focused in one small area. The process takes you away from customers. Then, we run to pick up food orders and deliver to tables--yep...no time to wash your hands--it is insane. Second, Denny's is constantly adding more and more prep work to servers, once again, taking them away from customers. We have had more walkouts and more complaints because the server is expected to do it all with an inefficient floor plan. We spend half of our time off the floor doing what prep cooks and service assistants should be doing---if the company would hire them. Our stores does a pretty good business due to the location, yet we constantly are understaffed on weekend nights with two to three servers to handle about 40 tables from seating to cleanup. You don't even have time to pee. Keep in mind that servers have to handle all of this work, plus side work, too before you can even call it quits. In effect, we end up working for nearly half of minimum wage to roll silverware, restock inventory, etc because we never had time to do it during our scheduled shift.

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5.0
Jun 29, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fun place to work and learn

Cons

Very long hours no breaks

2.0
May 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great Managers, Excellent coworkers, Hybrid, The best office manager ever, Tuition reimbursement

Cons

Sold to private equity in Jan 2026, 3 layoffs in 2 years, 3 CMOs in 3 years, Jan 2025, after a massive layoff, the Dallas employees were told the office was closing and we would be going remote to save money. April 2025 leadership decided we would no longer be going remote and would be moving the office to Grapevine. New office was 4,000 sqft. with approximately 20+ people in office. Dennys spent a lot of money on the office even though the original reason we closed the old office was to "SAVE" money. The Grapevine office was a walk in closet compared to our previous office and most of leadership either never came to said office or visited once for about 15 minutes max. CPO, who championed the Grapevine office and lived in Dallas, was never seen in the office ever Zero money invested in culture, Franchisees run absolutely everything, HR would stop by the Grapevine office randomly for about 5 minutes to do a head count on who was there and then leave, I heard they're moving to 4 days in office rather than 3, Merit increases were a joke, Got rid of the gym membership benefits without communication At the end of the day, Denny's sells extremely overpriced breakfast food and is operating in an oversaturated, declining market. Leadership is under the illusion that Denny's is on the same level as First Watch when in reality, Denny's is comparable to Waffle House/IHOP Quote from current ceo: "First Watch only exists because we let them."

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