Restaurant chain buries its racist image

A decade ago, restaurant chain Denny’s was nearly synonymous with racism.

Some of the restaurants were accused of making blacks prepay, not serving them as quickly as whites were served and sometimes not serving blacks at all. In one case, black Secret Service agents assigned to protect the president said they sat unserved until the whites around them had finished eating.

What resulted was a class-action lawsuit that was settled for $54 million in 1994 and pushed Denny’s to make an amazing transformation.

Today, approximately half of Denny’s parent company’s 46,000 employees are minorities, 11 percent of them black and 31 percent Hispanic. Thirty-two percent of the supervisory positions are held by minorities, and for two straight years Fortune magazine has named it the “Best Company in America for Minorities.”

Economy: Chief executives predict recovery by year’s end

Wall Street appears to be recovering and consumers aren’t as jittery about the economy, but the people who run corporate America aren’t declaring victory just yet.

TEC International’s quarterly survey of nearly 1,200 chief executives found most shying away from saying a recovery is under way, although they believe it will be in place by December, just in time for holiday shopping.

Of those polled by the San Diego, Calif.-based CEO development group, 60 percent say the recovery will start by the end of the year. Another 26 percent believe the economic rebound has already begun.

The industries expected to rebound fastest include manufacturing, information technology and biotechnology.

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