Denny’s Response to April 11 Incident in Syracuse, N.Y.

I am responding to concerns raised on the Internet related to an April 11 incident involving an altercation between off duty law enforcement officers acting as security guards and student groups, which occurred at a restaurant in Syracuse, N.Y owned and operated by a Denny’s franchisee.

As chief diversity officer for Denny’s parent company, Flagstar Companies, Inc., I want to emphasize that Denny’s has zero tolerance for any type of discrimination. We take any charge of discrimination based on race, color, or national origin very seriously, and all incidents are fully investigated by the Civil Rights Monitor, an independent office reporting to the U.S. Justice Department over which Denny’s exercises no control. In the Syracuse matter, the franchise owner asked the interested student groups to allow the Monitor’s Office to complete its investigation before reaching any conclusion. Unfortunately, the students did not want to wait and have publicized this as an incident of discrimination even though there has been no such finding.

If a Denny’s employee or franchisee is found to have been involved in an act of discrimination, that employee will be fired and/or the franchise will be terminated. You may be interested to know that the owner of the Denny’s in Syracuse is an African-American with a long-standing involvement in local civil rights activities.

To prevent discrimination, all 50,000 Denny’s employees complete intensive, custom-tailored diversity training. And every employee signs a document acknowledging their understanding of the law and Denny’s non-discrimination policies.

A good measure of how well a company is performing in the diversity arena is determined by the inclusiveness of its business operations. Allow me to share some statistics with you. In 1992, Flagstar and its affiliates held no contracts with minorities. We managed to grow minority contracts to $10 million in 1993; $25 million in 1994; $58 million in 1995 and $80 million in 1996. Our goal this year is $125 million, which we have already achieved. Many of these contracts are held by Asian-American companies. In the franchising arena, nearly 25% of all Denny’s franchise restaurants are now minority-owned, many by Asian-Americans.

Denny’s has undertaken extreme measures to ensure that racism and discrimination do not exist at our restaurants. We urge everyone to let the monitor’s investigation determine exactly what happened, including the actions of the security guards. After the investigation, Denny’s will act swiftly and decisively to correct any wrong-doings.

Ray Hood-Phillips
Chief Diversity Officer, Flagstar