You won’t believe what Denny’s was originally called

(NEXSTAR) – Denny’s, the diner chain that launched America to Grand Slams and Moons Over My Hammy, started its life as one thing else totally.

Danny’s. It was truly called Danny’s.

In 1953, Denny’s founders Harold Butler and Richard Jezak opened up a coffee-and-doughnut store in Lakewood, California, called Danny’s — Danny’s Donuts, particularly — and labored to open a number of places over the subsequent a number of years.

The identify “Danny,” in the meantime, held no actual significance for both Butler or Jezak. They picked it just because it was in style, and neither founder had any kinfolk or acquaintances in thoughts once they selected it, Butler instructed the Los Angeles Times in 1985.

But a couple of years after opening their first location, Jezak left the quickly increasing enterprise to stay nearer to household, and Butler determined to rebrand his outlets with a completely new identify.

Nope, not Denny’s. At least not but.

Starting together with his eighth location, Butler started calling his eating places by a brand new identify: Danny’s Coffee Shop. “Danny’s Donuts,” he mentioned, was now not indicative of the menu gadgets he started serving in response to a gross sales stoop on the second location, which prompted him to start providing burgers alongside his jam-filled doughnuts.

After all, a restaurant called “Danny’s Coffee Shop” might supply absolutely anything — sandwiches, burgers, breakfast, doughnuts. There was just one drawback: Los Angeles already had a series called Coffee Dan’s, and Butler didn’t need his prospects to conflate the 2, in line with the official Denny’s website. (An early investor in Danny’s Donuts who spoke with Los Angeles Magazine in 2012 claimed that Coffee Dan’s truly despatched a cease-and-desist letter to Butler and different execs.)  

Butler’s answer was to rename the eating places as soon as once more in 1959 — this time to Denny’s Coffee Shops, utilizing one other identify he selected as a result of it sounded shut sufficient to “Danny.” (Menus from 1960 even featured both names, Jezak’s daughter as soon as confirmed to L.A. Mag.) By 1961, Butler dropped “Coffee Shops” from the identify totally, settling merely on Denny’s.

“And the rest is history,” claims the official Denny’s web site.

We’ll by no means know if Butler had plans to rename Denny’s for a fourth or fifth time. In 1971, he tried to purchase the then-parent firm of Caesars Palace, however was accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of providing a greater deal to sure shareholders of the corporate, The Washington Post as soon as reported. The deal was off, and Denny’s inventory costs took a dive. Butler stepped down as chairman and offered his stake in Denny’s quickly afterward.

Butler didn’t instantly retire totally from the restaurant trade altogether. Just as he had carried out with Denny’s — and Winchell’s Donut House, which Denny’s bought in 1968 — Butler tried to develop a number of restaurant chains over the next a long time. In 1979, he bought and expanded Naugles, a Mexican-inspired fast-food chain that was finally absorbed by Del Taco. And within the mid-‘1980s, he attempted to popularize a delicatessen chain called Hershel’s.

Right up till his departure from the restaurant trade, nonetheless, he at all times held a particular place in his coronary heart for Denny’s. Or Danny’s. Or no matter he appreciated to name it.

“If we had bought Caesars, I’d still be with Denny’s,” he instructed the LA Times in 1985.