In an insightful interview with rolling out, Kelli Valade, President and CEO of Denny’s, delves into the company’s deep-rooted commitment to community service, diversity, and inclusion.
With a rich history spanning seven decades, Denny’s has consistently demonstrated its dedication to making a positive impact on the communities it serves. Valade shares her journey, emphasizing the importance of education, empowerment, and the transformative power of seeing and uplifting others.
She also discusses the unique challenges and opportunities faced by women in leadership, offering valuable advice for aspiring female CEOs. Through her leadership, Valade continues to champion the values of unity and progress, ensuring that Denny’s remains a beacon of hope and support for all.
Munson Steed: Talk about this initiative that you started with and why it was corporate strategy for you?
Kelli Valade: Denny’s has a longstanding history of doing good in the communities that we serve. We are diverse in every sense, from our customer base to our employee base and workforce to our suppliers, to our franchisees. So, we are the fabric of America, we say we are America’s Diner for today’s America. And we have three decades at this in terms of doing good in the communities we serve. So today was monumental — a huge day, actually — in announcing Community, which is around unity in the communities that we serve. And so, our partnership started today here.
It’s such a beautiful place, the St. Thomas University with the Benjamin L. Crump School of Law. And we made our first donation today; it is one of a broader donation and broader sponsorships that we’ll do over the coming years. And again, many organizations, partner organizations, and the funds will go to things like scholarships, education, just better community involvement, building an inclusive pipeline. But honestly, we are about human and civil rights and just trying to do good where we are, Denny’s has always been about doing good where we are. And I think that’s critical for any company today that isn’t doing good with what they have. And what they’ve been given, I think it’s a miss.
Denny’s feeds people body, mind and soul
MS: Describe your role in the community. You actually have several things that you sponsor. Just share a few of those that you are moved by.
KV: Well, so I’ve been with the Denny’s organization two years now, just two years. And so part of joining the organization, I knew what the organization stood for. Since 1953, Denny’s is 70 years young. In 1953, Harold Butler, who founded Danny’s Donuts, was asked, why did you start a company? Why did you start a restaurant? Why be open 24/7? That’s hard. And his answer was, “Because I love to feed people.”
So, at Denny’s we say and have built on that over the many decades that we’ve been in business, to say we love to feed people body, mind and soul. And body, mind, and soul gives you so much permission to do more than serving food. And don’t we need that today, I think more than ever, restaurants for me, I started at 16 in the restaurant business. And restaurants for me are a place where, when everything else is perhaps divided, you can bring people together. And it’s much more than about serving food.
So, for Denny’s, our commitment to the communities is about bringing our mobile relief diner to communities that might need or be in need of comfort and of sustenance. But it’s also about education. And we’ve given away over two and a half million dollars already to HBCUs. There’s a huge commitment there. No Kid Hungry is another organization, we’ve given over $12 million in raising money through our guests for that.
So the list goes on and on and on to over 2 billion in supplier and business diversity. And it just is about continuing to look at what we do, engage where people need us. Aristotle said where the needs of the world and your passion intersect there lies your purpose. And I think Denny’s has a deep-rooted, deep-founded purpose that we continue to work to live up to.
MS: Female leadership is so key. You said raising your hand was one of the superpowers. When you got in the room, imposter syndrome. Can you speak to being the CEO, and really just telling future women CEOs about imposter syndrome?
KV: Yeah. So we all have it. And women, I think, admit it more readily than men do, perhaps. I think women just in general are a little bit more vulnerable about their strengths and their weaknesses and a bit more transparent. But by the way, transparency, vulnerability, kind of showing those things and being real is what I think great leaders are all about. And if women inherently have those traits, anyway, then leaning into that. It’s a beautiful thing for the future, I think of leaders.
And so for me, I teach a class, actually to women. And that class is based on really talking about the beliefs that may hold you back as a woman. And so for me, telling people my story of raising my hand for different assignments or speaking up, even if it didn’t feel comfortable in the moment, was what got me to having this crazy, beautiful career that I’ve been allowed to have. I started in the restaurant business at 16. And I started in a diner.
I started at TJ’s Big Boy. And this industry has been amazing to me and so good to me, that part of it is also about making sure people know what’s possible in this industry. And so I think women have to get past the imposter syndrome, find somebody to talk to about it. And be open about that. And it’ll help other leaders know [that] I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to be who I am.
Getting comfortable with change
MS: As the CEO, how do you remain curious?
KV: I think you have to remain curious. The world is changing. Everything is constantly changing. So you have to get really comfortable with change, especially think about the last four or five years now, and how much change we’ve all encountered. So if you’re not getting comfortable with change, then I think you really will struggle, you can’t stay still.
We talked about at Denny’s, there’s comfort, and there’s stretch, and then there’s panic. So the only bad thing is if you are in constant panic, but when you’re stretching yourself, you’re growing. So you have to really lean into the change the world needs. And I think the world needs a lot of that right now. And people that are willing to embrace change.
MS: If you were going to give a speech at an HBCU or urban college or even in Dallas [at] SMU, what would you encourage future leaders to be? What would the title of your Graduation Commencement speech be for them?
KV: Okay, so I do have a keynote that I do whenever asked. I won’t have time to talk about all of it today. But I do have a pretty unique story in that coming into this restaurant business, and in starting at that diner at 16. Those managers saw something in me and said, “You can be a trainer, you could be a manager, you could move up and you can do anything you want in this restaurant, but even more so in the restaurant business as a whole.”
And somebody’s giving me that gift of saying I see this in you. “I see potential in you” is what I think I would talk about, and I would talk about the power of being seen. And so at a very young age, I watch people come into that diner, people that I served every day that came in for more than food, that came to be seen. And I think when leaders can connect and truly see others, he can’t look away. And people need that more now than ever. So my keynote is really about the leaders’ highest calling is about seeing others.
