As with all restaurant jobs, it depends on management. - Server Denny's Employee Review

2.0
Mar 1, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

For the most part, it's a high volume restaurant. One bad tip or stiff won't ruin your income for the night as at restaurants with more limited seating. It's a 24 hour restaurant so there are a lot of available hours. If you're willing to work overnights, you can often pick up shifts that way.

Cons

Management will make or break you. I've worked for great managers and worked for terrible ones. I worked for a franchise, so the rules were never quite clear; they claimed they followed corporate brand standards, but one look in the brand standard book would should quite a few things that weren't followed. You never knew if you were breaking a rule because the rules changed at least once a month. Denny's tends to have weird rushes when you're not staffed for it. 2 PM on a weekday should be dead, but I've sold a $250 hour by myself at the time in the past (consider that your guest check average is less than $10) The food kind of sucks and you'll get sick of eating at work in a few months.

Explore other reviews about Denny's

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."

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All