Senior Manager, Guest Intelligence & Consumer Insights

Role Summary

Denny’s is seeking a Senior Manager, Guest Intelligence & Consumer Insights to help the organization better understand what guests and consumers are saying about our brand, our food, our value, and the restaurant experience.

This role is not designed to sit inside one department or serve one functional agenda. It will work across the organization to connect guest feedback, consumer behavior, vendor insights, marketplace trends, restaurant-level signals, and business priorities. The purpose of the role is to help close the gap between what guests are experiencing, what our teams are seeing, and how the business makes decisions.

The goal is not more reporting. The goal is sharper intelligence that helps Denny’s move faster, improve the guest experience, support operators and franchise owners, strengthen brand relevance, and protect guest trust.

What This Role Will Do

This person will help Denny’s answer the questions that matter most: What are guests saying about us? What are consumers saying about our food? What do they love? What is frustrating them? What is gaining traction in the market? What feels like noise, and what is becoming a pattern? What should the business act on faster?

The role requires someone who can read across guest feedback, consumer care data, reviews, surveys, social sentiment, vendor reports, competitive activity, food trends, and marketplace signals, then turn that information into clear business insight.

Key Responsibilities

1. Build an enterprise view of guest and consumer intelligence. Create a connected view of what guests and consumers are saying across complaints, reviews, surveys, social sentiment, consumer care data, restaurant feedback, vendor insights, competitive activity, and external marketplace signals.

2. Read food, menu, value, and brand signals. Track what guests are saying about food quality, craveability, portions, pricing, promotions, abundance, value, service, hospitality, and menu relevance. Help the business understand where Denny’s is building momentum and where the experience may be creating friction.

3. Monitor what is gaining traction in the market. Stay close to food trends, consumer behavior, competitive moves, cultural conversations, social moments, and guest cravings that could influence Denny’s relevance, traffic, brand perception, and menu thinking.

4. Partner across the organization and with vendors. Work closely with Marketing, Culinary, Operations, Communications, Consumer Care, Training, Legal, Field Leadership, franchisee support teams, and external vendors to connect insights, challenge assumptions, and move the right information into the right conversations.

5. Turn data into business meaning. Separate noise from real patterns and explain what the information means for traffic, trust, guest satisfaction, menu strategy, marketing, operations, franchisee support, training, communications, and brand reputation.

6. Move insight into action. Create simple, executive-ready readouts and practical recommendations that help leaders, operators, franchise owners, and cross-functional teams understand what is happening, why it matters, and what action should be considered.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is curious, analytical, commercially aware, and strong at connecting dots across a business. This person should be able to read comments, dashboards, reviews, complaints, surveys, social conversations, vendor reports, and trend data, then clearly explain what matters.

They should understand restaurants, food, people, and behavior. They do not need to be a data scientist, but they must be comfortable with data, disciplined in interpretation, and strong at turning information into insight.

This person must be able to work across functions without becoming territorial. They need to build trust with teams, understand different business needs, and help create a more connected view of the guest and consumer.

Experience and Skills

The right candidate will bring experience in consumer insights, guest experience, customer care analytics, brand strategy, restaurant or hospitality operations, reputation management, social listening, marketing analytics, research, or a related field.

Experience in restaurants, hospitality, retail, franchise systems, consumer brands, or multi-unit businesses is strongly preferred.

Success in This Role

Success means Denny’s becomes sharper, faster, and more connected in how it listens to guests and consumers. Leaders should have clearer visibility into what people are saying. Operators and franchise owners should receive more useful insight. Marketing, Culinary, Communications, Training, Consumer Care, and Operations should have better information to guide decisions.

This role helps Denny’s understand what guests are saying, what consumers are responding to, where food and value signals are emerging, where the organization may be disconnected, and how the business moves from insight to action.

The typical pay range for this role is:

Minimum:$104,000.00 - Maximum:$143,000.00

Please note that this range represents the pay range for all positions in the job grade within which the position falls. This job posting is not a promise of any specific pay for any specific employee as the actual pay will take into account a range of factors, including location and experience.

Denny's, Inc. is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all persons regardless of age, race, creed, color, national origin, citizenship status, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, genetic information, military or veteran's status, criminal background, or any other characteristic protected by Federal, State, or local law.

Applicants requiring reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process should contact 864-597-8000. PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT THIS NUMBER TO CHECK THE STATUS OF YOUR APPLICATION.

Denny’s, Inc. participates in E-Verify. We will provide the Social Security Administration, and if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization. For more information on E-Verify, please contact the DHS at 888-897-7781 or dhs.gov/e-verify. Please note that we do not use this information to pre-screen job applicants.