Denny's — Restaurant in Marina

I recently visited Denny’s restaurant in Marina, at dinner time, on Thanksgiving night. I was traveling and running late for my family gathering, so I decided to stop in for a quick sit-down meal. Options were limited, and I was glad to see Denny’s was open and serving dinner. With a background in food service, I understand and appreciate good scheduling and solid service. Unfortunately, my experience left me with mixed feelings.

When I arrived, the restaurant was incredibly busy—lines out the door kind of busy. To my surprise, there was only one employee, Bavy, working the front. She was doing it all: greeting guests, waitressing, and handling to-go orders. It was clear she was overwhelmed, but she maintained a friendly attitude and worked as efficiently as possible. I was seated after waiting about 15 minutes, which I didn’t mind considering the situation.

Bavy took my drink order promptly, and it arrived in about five minutes, again, impressive given the circumstances. However, it became obvious that she was the only one managing the dining room and takeout orders. Watching her juggle so many responsibilities while remaining professional was admirable, but the restaurant’s lack of adequate staffing turned the entire experience sour.

Many guests left due to long wait times, and the restaurant clearly lost a lot of business that evening. My main concern is with the management: Why would they schedule only one person to manage the restaurant on a busy holiday? It’s common sense that being one of the few places open would mean an influx of diners. Proper planning, customer service, and understanding the needs of the market are basic principles of running a successful restaurant and the store manager SHOULD know this.

Bavy deserves high praise for doing her best in such a challenging situation, but Denny’s management needs to rethink their staffing, leadership and operational strategies. I’ll be taking my concerns to corporate, not only to commend this hard-working employee but also to highlight the avoidable chaos caused by poor planning and extremely...

This Denny's is one of the best service restaurants I've ever been to. They actually made a mistake on one of our orders on a visit, more details below, and I still think this is a no-question "Best Of" contender.

First visit, 8 of us order 8 different meals and we get checked for additional need about every 5-10 minutes. Their syrup pours a bit slow so they replaced with another bottle of syrup and apologize (not necessary but understood... It is syrup and those bottles easily clog up).

Second visit, 8 of us order eight different meals and one forgets to mention they can't have onions and don't want mushrooms. When the food arrives she apologized and didn't even have to ask for it to be sent back or explain. She said "shoot, I forgot yo ask for no mushrooms or onion" and the waitress responded with " oh no, we'll have the chef remake it. Was that our problem or yours? " And, since we didn't order it that way we said ours... They responded with "Good. We can easily make that better, we just don't want to make mistakes on our end."

Everyone else is eating and it comes back with no mushrooms but does have onions. Now they made the mistakes but, due to the level of service, she didn't want to point out the mistake and send it back a second time.

There are miscommunications between wait staff and chefs (that was one example) but they're minor and honestly, with the smiles and charm and ideal level of service, mean nothing to degrade a 5-star review. I only mention in-case the owner reads the review or people with food allergies (like on in our party) order so they're sure to verify the food was made right.

The second visit we had 3-6 minute interval between visits for additional needs. They're attentive, helpful, and do everything they can to accommodate. We plan to go back a third time in our 4-day visit to Monterey.

The image is a view of the beach from a 15 minute walk or 2 minute drive from this location as well... This is a public beach that anyone can go to right before/after...

So as we entered we could see it was somewhat busy. But definitely felt a unsettling vibe as we got seated. The place was very cold temperature wise. It usually is but this day was extremely cold. I was ready to over rule the family but they really wanted to eat hear. Now the waitress did tell us the food was going to take a bit to come out. But from that days experience I've learned to really ask from now on ," what's a bit"? So like 15 minutes went by and that's when I started to over hear customers complain about how long they've been waiting. A table of 2 customers told the waitress they were there already 45 minutes and she was telling them it was going to be another 10 minutes. The customers got up and walked out. That should of been the que for me to get out. I over heard the waitress tell other customers that they only had one cook and he was trying to do the best. I'm not in the restaurant business, but please tell this to the customers up front. Let them know the situation and that they might wait an hour for their food to come out. That way we can decide if we are willing to wait that long and experience this situation. So 50 minutes later we finally got our order. The only reason I would probably visit this location again because after all this , the food was good. The cook should receive the tip I left that night. I stopped going to one location in monterey already because of the service, please don't let this continue at this location because I will stop coming. And please warm up the place a little, Marina does not...