Denny's Changes World Forever With "Rockstar Menu"

I need to talk to you about something important.

Are you sitting down? Of course you are. You are probably at a computer. Or maybe you're on an iPhone, a Blackberry, or some other kind of mobile device. Maybe you had a plate put into your head during the war, and since the dawn of the Internet you've been able to read web pages on the back of your eyelids.

You should be sitting down for this.

I want to talk to you about Denny's. Ever been to a Denny's? I have. There were times in my life when I could be said to frequent the restaurant. Most recently, I lived outside Los Angeles, in the gorgeous South Bay region of southern California. I worked at a place in Redondo Beach, and there was a Denny's on the corner, so when the urge struck, I would pick up a book and head over for my personal poison, the Super Bird. They describe it far better than I ever could: "Thinly sliced turkey breast with melted Swiss cheese, bacon strips and tomato on grilled sourdough."

Oh, so sweet.

But apparently, Denny's doesn't have quite the same cachet as it used to with what folks of my age like to call "the kids." Man, back in the day, I remember many a high school night that ended with a trip to Denny's. Actually, most of them ended up in either the Oak Lawn Restaurant (OLR) or Paragon, two homegrown diners on the south side of Chicagoland. But in a pinch, Denny's would work.

(Exactly seven high school nights ended where they all should have ended—with me and some lass steaming up the windows on my parents' station wagon. As I grow older, I find this explains a lot, and exactly nothing, at the same time.)

Let's say you're an uppity-up exec at Denny's, and you're noticing that what was once the preferred late night hangout for troubled youth is now more frequently the province of retirees looking for a cheap, filling meal and tourists afraid to try local fare and comforted by the regularity of a Grand Slam in all fifty states of the union.

What to do, what to do? How do you reach these "kids"?

Apparently, you launch something called an "Allnighter Rockstar Menu," and enlist actual pop artists to create their own dish. It appears to be the brainchild of Mark Chmiel, a man known as the "chief marketing and innovation officer" for Denny's.

Article Author: Matt Springer

Matt Springer should probably trim his toenails more often. Instead, he spends far too much time thinking and writing about pop culture ephemera, at Alert Nerd (for geek stuff) and Pop Geek (for everything else). …

Visit Matt Springer's author page — Matt Springer's Blog