Morning in America

The deal was announced with a 30-second television ad
during
the Super Bowl. The first 25 seconds of the
ad feature a trio of
gangster types seated in a diner (shades of the Sopranos finale), where their “business discussion” is
repeatedly interrupted by a waitress spraying whipped cream onto their
waffles. Then comes the twist ending, delivered via voice-over: “Isn’t
it time for a serious breakfast? This Tuesday from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00
p.m., Denny’s is giving a free Grand Slam to everyone in America.
Seriously.”

To define our terms: The “Super Bowl” is an annual television event
in which a decisive game of American football is wrapped in the year’s
highest-profile commercials. (An estimated 98 million people viewed the
43rd Super Bowl.) The “Grand Slam” is the best-selling item of the
great American restaurant chain Denny’s: two eggs, two pancakes, two
bacon strips, and two sausage links for $5.99—except on Tuesday,
February 3, 2009, between 6:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., when a Grand Slam
would cost anyone in America zero dollars and zero cents. America, as
defined by Denny’s, is anywhere there’s a Denny’s.

“This free offer is our way of reacquainting America with Denny’s
real breakfast and with the Denny’s brand,” said Denny’s CEO Nelson
Marchioli in a statement. Industry experts estimated the cost of the
promotion—from the Super Bowl ad buy to the half-day food
giveaway—at about $5 million. This
multimillion-dollar gift
to America seemed designed to rescue Denny’s from the
recession-
driven slump in “casual dining,” to recast the
restaurant as a sit-down sibling of the apparently recession-proof
McDonald’s, and to present an attractively thrifty alternative to
Applebee’s etc.

On the morning of the Great Grand-Slam Giveaway, I awoke to news
reports about lines outside Denny’s across the country: Orlando,
Kalamazoo, Reno. Outside Seattle’s last remaining Denny’s—in
Sodo, just across six lanes of traffic from the pink Elephant Car Wash
along an industrial run of Fourth Avenue South—the line stretched
out the front door and across the parking lot, a growing mob of all
sorts of people united in anticipation underneath the yellow
Denny’s-sign sun. In line behind me at 11:30 a.m.: a gaggle of
high-school girls fussing with cell phones and lazily grousing about
the wait. (“I don’t wait in lines,” I heard one girl
say.) Still, their devotion to free food was made plain as they rattled
off the places that give you free stuff on your birthday:
“Baskin-
Robbins, Dairy Queen, Denny’s…” In line in front of me:
a twentysomething guy and girl wearing backpacks I was ready to chalk
up to urban sportiness until I heard them speaking. “The food kitchen
would probably be just as fast,” said the guy. “And the bathrooms just
as clean,” added the girl.

Flowing past slowly but steadily was a stream of sated customers,
freshly stuffed with free Grand Slams and staggering out full and happy
and lightly dazzled by their good fortune. “I didn’t have to pay a
thing, man!” came a shout from within a group of bleary-eyed
guys in sports jerseys, passing the just-parked car with the boomin’
system spitting out another batch of high-school lunch-
breakers to
join the line. Close to the entryway, a fellow
patron—unidentifiably punk or homeless or both or
neither—smoked marijuana discreetly. Once inside, the male half
of the backpacked couple in front of me asked if I wanted to share a
table.

Before long, we were seated in a just-
vacated,
still-glistening-with-rag-water booth by a busboy who gave us the
lowdown: Each customer was entitled to one free Grand Slam, served as
is (eggs scrambled, no substitutions). A harried-but-contained waitress
took our order—three Grand Slams, one coffee, two
waters—then darted off. The whole place buzzed with frantic
busyness: line cooks stacking hot Grand Slams three high under heat
lamps, servers speed-walking to and fro, and a line of customers
actually, continuously out the door.

While we waited for our food, the couple shared their knowledge
about the hierarchy of chain-diner food (Denny’s is cheaper than IHOP,
but Federal Way’s Village Inn is cheaper than both). When our food
arrived, I gave them my bacon and sausage, and gave up my qualms about
eating eggs and pancakes that had touched meat. (Such vegetarian
fussiness is one of the first casualties of a global economic
downturn.) The eggs and pancakes were perfectly good, with the eggs
cooked to a just-right medium (not runny, not dry) and the pancakes
exemplary models of the form. The only reason to eat pancakes made by
someone else is the hope that their pancakes will be better than yours,
and Denny’s kept up its end of the bargain.

After paying the waitress for my coffee (and tipping her 500
percent—there should be medals for such service), I found myself
back on the pavement with my dining partners, our systems singing from
the 795-calorie jolt of fat, carbs, and protein that fostered a feeling
close to complete (if temporary) contentment. The unique glories of the
surprise free meal have been the subject of everything from comics
(Lynda Barry’s classic strip about the power of Burger Barn leftovers)
to literature (the stunning finale of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of
Wrath). Heading out of Denny’s, I was reminded why: A good free
meal can make anyone feel like a lottery winner.

The Great Grand-Slam Giveaway may not have hit its target
market—the would-be Applebee’s customer, tightening the
proverbial if not the actual belt—but it created exorbitant
goodwill among high schoolers, stoners, and the homeless (and, probably
especially, combinations thereof). “How was it?” shouted a man near the
back of the line to his friend, who’d just emerged from his feeding.
The friend shouted back, “It was delicious!”