Shareholders with Denny's ( DENN) approved the restaurant company's $620M buyout by private equity investment company TriArtisan Capital Advisors (owner of TGI Fridays and P.F. Chang's), investment firm Treville Capital, and Yadav Enterprises, which is one of Denny's largest franchisees.

Looking back, Denny's ( DENN) began in 1953 as a coffee shop concept that quickly shifted to a 24-hour diner model and leaned heavily into franchising as it scaled through the 1960s and 1970s. The chain lived inside larger corporate structures and public vehicles for decades before eventually trading under its own name on the Nasdaq in 1997. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Denny's ( DENN) management moved toward an asset-light model, refranchising restaurants and positioning the stock as a cash-generative, franchisor-leaning diner brand with modest company-owned exposure.?However, the restaurant stock lost more than 75% of its pre-pandemic high from 2019 in the challenging years that followed as the chain struggled with traffic headwinds, eventually leading the board to look at strategic alternatives.

As of June 25, 2025, the Denny's ( DENN) store count stood at 1,558 restaurants, with 1,484 Denny’s-brand locations and 74 Keke’s restaurants in the mix.