Your Solution for America Must Factor in Denny's
To fix America you have to fix Denny's
America is a machine. At least, maybe it’s best to think of America as a machine. Many of the metrics that measure America are machine metrics. Gross Domestic Product is a measure of the engine of the economy. NASDAQ-100 and S&P-500 are measures of the engine of the finance. The “Defense Budget” is a measure of the machine of war. More minute metrics like demographics, geographics, and sociographic factors all contribute to the machine that is the US of A. America has optimized for these machine metrics. We have the largest economy, the most startups, and the highest salaries. This engine of progress has drawn people from the four corners of the earth, making the immigration machine the largest in the world1. And despite recent headlines about research funding cuts, the US science research machine is still #1 in pure dollar value2. To understand US global status, you have to treat a country as a machine. The country has a variety of inputs (people, money, work, etc.) that produce an output (GDP, growing financial market, political power, etc.). The inputs and outputs can be measured and these measurements can be compared to other nations to get an idea of where one nation stands relative to others. In this respect, the US is, broadly speaking, the greatest machine in the world, optimizing nearly every machine metric toward a global maximum.
On my Grandpa’s farm in central Texas there is an old cement truck that broke down in a field some twenty or thirty years ago. To this day it has not moved from that spot. A tree has grown up through the middle of it and the grass has covered the wheels. In many ways, the cement truck is a picture of how machines can be misleading. Machines can stop, the life around it doesn’t. This simple distinction is often missing when it comes to analyzing America. The American engine is treated as synonymous with the American life. Many analysts treat America as a furiously running engine and neglect the living grass which is ready to grow up around the wheels. The machine metrics cannot measure the life of things inside the machine. This is why there is such a disconnect between American prosperity on paper and the actual well being of the Americans living in it. The engine of politics is optimizing the machine metrics, and the machine metrics are not measuring people or their lives. Right now, the machine is moving and churning, the fastest and most well oiled machine in the world. Right now it hums and purrs like it really is alive. But let the machine stop, let it slow to a crawl and watch the living tree of humanity grow up between the still wheels.
One Saturday morning, I decided to look inside this American machine. It was nearly nine o’clock in the morning when I decided to breakfast at a random Denny’s nearby. Just to be absolutely clear, Denny’s is at best in the middle-of-the-Gaussian when it comes to food. Everything there can be described as “edible” and nothing more3. You will find a better breakfast basically anyplace else, including simply going hungry. But Denny’s is part of the American machine. It employs some 10,000-20,000 workers across the franchises. That’s not a lot nationwide, but when you consider restaurants having, on average, a 79.6% turnover rate, Denny’s begins play a non-negligible role in the restaurant labor force4. Yet the Denny’s machine is beginning to stall, if it hasn’t stalled already. Before being acquired by private equity in January this year, their quarterlies betrayed a stagnation, with most increased revenue coming from newly acquired franchises rather than increased sales5. Nevertheless, this doesn’t stop Denny’s from being generous in supporting their employees6. For example, Denny’s will pay up to 70% of your educational expenses if you decide to go to school7. Not bad. With the one caveat being funding maxes out at $2000 per year. This is in contrast to other restaurants like McDonalds paying up to $5200 per year8. In any case, the paltry tuition assistance is still an example of the machine touching the people inside of it. It is can also be a proxy measurement for the overall health of a business. A profitable company is more likely to invest in things like tuition assistance. Denny’s own efforts seem to betray a machine shuddering to a crawl.
It was a warm July morning the day I confronted this machine. A child’s single-speed bicycle was laying outside on the ground. I realized later it probably belonged to one of the workers. When I walked in and said I needed a table for one, a nice lady pointed vaguely in the direction of the bar. “We’ll getcha right here,” is what she said. I wasn’t sure where “here” was, but I seated myself at the bar and waited. They eventually found a menu for me and later found me a set of utensils. This Denny’s was like every other Denny’s in that no one can do their job. 10 minutes in, they ran out of silverware. Three different people came up to the bar, one asking for a clean glass, another for a steak knife, and another for a menu. I don’t know why they expected to get any of those things. This was Denny’s after all.
Figure 1: I later used this in an oil change.
I ordered a coffee and had a scattered conversation with the waitress. She was an older woman of the deep South to whom everyone was her grandchild. She complained about how busy they were that Saturday morning (the restaurant was maybe half full) and was wondering if the police gave me any trouble on the 4th of July. Everyone behind the counter called her “Miss Lisa”. All types were behind the counter. Highschoolers, 20 somethings, and middle aged. It was almost like a family reunion. And this was the biggest point of the whole visit: everyone, and I mean everyone, was really nice. Even the customers not getting served, the ones not getting seated, and the ones drinking from dirty cups were really nice about the inconveniences. No one was shouting or being angry. Even the manager wasn’t upset by the missing utensils and empty soda fountain. This isn’t always the case, I’m aware9. But it was a moment when you could finally see the people in the machine. The Americans in that Denny’s were the average Americans. They were disorganized, incompetent, untidy, inefficient, confused, underpaid, overworked, and the best group of people to hang out with on a Saturday morning. The grass was alive and growing around the crawling machine of Denny’s.
One of the young ladies behind the counter was complaining about the small town. She vowed to get out of there as soon as she could get a car. I wondered if the bike out front belonged to her. The waitress seemed to be about the same age as the manager. In the conventional machine metrics, they both should have been managers based on their age and experience. And yet people make their choices and by all accounts, are settled with them. This is the thing which is most difficult to measure with the machine metrics. How do people move between the economic classes? Not the textbook answers of how they should or could move between classes (i.e., education, wages, community, etc.), but how do they actually do it? What are their stories? And another question worth asking, do they even want to? The job at Denny’s is not a bad job. It pays, in some cases, above minimum wage. You don’t even have to be good at it. You don’t even have to make sure people have utensils, apparently. Why leave something like that?
Halfway through my eggs and pancakes I stood up and explained to the entire restaurant how fortunate everyone was to be partaking in the fruits of the American economy. I went through all of the 2025 quarterlies, describing in animated detail the recent acquisition of Keke’s breakfast cafe. Everyone applauded when I said this led to a combined sales increase of 5.3% over the previous year. I had them on the edge of their seats with the debt-to-EBITDA ratio for the last 5 years, the leverage frightening the more timid children. When I got to the climax of the story, the recent acquisition by private equity firm TriArtisan Capital Advisors, the entire store erupted. Men and women hugged each other. Children danced on the tables and their parents didn’t care. The manager gave everyone free breakfast as the people began singing the Star Spangled Banner with a Denny’s mug in one hand and a newly cleaned fork in the other. It was a scene that could have warmed even the coldest nights at Valley Forge, and would even have made King George III whistle Yankee Doodle.
Abi Olivera has a great piece discussing the problems the “machine”(my words, not hers) has when it comes to addressing the part-time minimum wage worker. Her work is what makes me hesitant to simply say Denny’s could be fixed by simply increasing the minimum wage. I do believe minimum wage should be increased, but I don’t think doing so will have the intended effect. And this is where, again, we revert to the machine metrics. Can we turn the knob of wages to increase economic mobility? If I have made a point at all, it’s that we have to stop thinking about solutions in terms of “knobs” and “switches”. That’s machine language. And what my visit to the machine found was that, at the end of the day, life finds a way in the machine. People find a way to be people in this unwieldy machine of a country. Happiness and human flourishing are not things that can be measured with the metrics of a machine. No one in that Denny’s knew they were heirs of the greatest economy in the world. If the Denny’s machine is anything, it is a means to an end. Any policies changed are for the lives inside the machine, not the machine itself. And what was clear to me that Saturday morning was that the problems with Denny’s are not machine problems. The problems were human problems, as were the successes.
The Onion had some good journalism on Denny’s: https://theonion.com/denny-s-introduces-new-3-000-spider-egg-omelet-1819592706/
I worked at Dennys when I was in high school and I certainly wasnt good at it. One family came in to celebrate their daughter's graduation, a girl I recognized from school. I accidentally dropped a plate of hot wings on one of the men who I think was her uncle. Somehow, amazingly, i still got a tip.