Denny’s closed five more restaurants in Minnesota and Wisconsin, with four shuttered in Minnesota and one in Wisconsin, as the chain’s cleanup of weaker stores kept moving through its franchise system. The affected operator, M15 Inc., said it had accumulated unsustainable debt and planned to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
The latest closures matter because they add to 150 restaurants shuttered in 2024 and 2025, a pace that shows how aggressively Denny’s is pruning its portfolio while trying to stabilize the brand. In 2025 alone, the company shuttered 4.5% of its locations and sales declined by 2%, pressure that helps explain why the chain has been pushing to remove lower-performing stores and lift average unit volumes from $1.9 million to a target of $2.2 million per restaurant.
That push is now being carried out under Christopher Bode, who replaced Kelli Vallade as CEO in April after Denny’s was acquired in January for $620 million by TriArtisan Capital Advisors, Treville Capital Group and Yadav Enterprises. The turnaround plan, Project Grand Slam, is aimed at making the system leaner and stronger, even as the company also launched its first national catering program this summer.
But the closure of the Minnesota and Wisconsin sites also shows the limits of that effort. Denny’s said it is working with urgency alongside its franchise network to explore every viable path to reopen as many of these restaurants as it can, while M15 Inc. is moving toward Chapter 7 bankruptcy. That leaves open whether any of the five locations will come back at all, or whether they will become part of the chain’s broader cleanup.
For Bode, the immediate test is whether the brand can cut losses without shedding too much presence in the market. For customers in Minnesota and Wisconsin, the answer may arrive quickly: if the restaurants do not reopen soon, the closures will become permanent markers of a turnaround that is still trying to find its footing.
