Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Today’s episode is a powerful reminder that leadership isn’t about titles, it’s about people. And I’m talking to Kelly Ade, the CEO of Denny’s, who started her career in a big boy restaurant at 16 years old and never left the industry from filling out her college financial aid forms with the help of a restaurant manager who helped her to now leading a nationally iconic brand. Kelly story is about the power of being seen and the responsibility of seeing others. We talk about her personal journey, including a remarkable discovery about her identity that began with a 23 and Me Test gifted by her team, and that ended with a life-changing reunion with her birth parents. It’s a beautiful story. She opens up about mental health and loneliness and Generation Z scaling culture across thousands of restaurants, and how leadership rooted in service builds brands that last. We also discuss how Denny’s defines Feeding the Soul and why culture is the ultimate business strategy and how you keep a legacy brand relevant without losing the heart that made it iconic in the first place. This conversation is one I’ll be thinking about for a long time. Here’s my interview with Kelly Ti. Thank you so much for joining us. So what is your why?

Kelli Valade:
I think for all the years that I have been just so honored to be able to do what I do over time has become this idea of the power being seen and the power of seeing others. And because at 16 I was able and afforded this amazing opportunity, it was a restaurant job and it’s all I’ve ever done. I found so much power in the idea that a leader’s true calling is seeing others. And so for me, the why outside of family and having an amazing family that’s my north star, my beacon, that’s my true why is to be a good mom and a good wife and have all the traditions I grew up with Outside of that work. At a very young age, I started creating or feeling this momentum around the fact that just seeing others, once you truly see others or see someone, you’re recruited to their welfare.
And I think a leader’s job highest calling is really about making sure people feel seen. And so the why for me, it has evolved over time to just how do I do that? And small company, big company, how do you connect with people so much so that they can feel seen? So that’s probably so beautiful. The why for me, that has evolved over time and yet started from the very beginning for me and that somebody saw something saw and it created a spark for me. It created belief. And I think so many times, just seeing someone especially today makes a big difference.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Well, so that’s where I was going to go next. Where did that come from? I mean, it sounds like you had a tragic childhood that you’re passionate about being seen, right? Because that’s what resonates with me is no one saw me when I was a child. I would love to be seen, but it sounds like someone saw something in you. What can you tell us that story? Sure.

Kelli Valade:
Yeah. So I wouldn’t say awful, right? And so there’s a bit of this story that’ll come a little full circle in that just how I grew up and I grew up in an adopted family, an Italian family in upstate New York. And so again, there were a lot of great traditions. My grandmother, every Sunday we were there for dinner. I think my love for the restaurant industry really to some extent also comes for this love of feeding people and just the joy of bringing people together around the table. So that I learned and was a real foundation for me and my family. That said, fast forward to when I turned 16. In my first job, I was at a Bob’s TJ’s big boy. So I was at a TJ’s big boy in upstate New York. And it was really where somebody said at that point, my family little parents were divorced at this point, a little bit rockier, still the foundation there with my grandparents, but rockier.
And so when I joined the Big Boy, within months of working there, maybe within a couple weeks, somebody said, one of the managers said, you could do this. You could be a trainer, a server, you could move on, you could be a manager here if you wanted to. And so just someone seeing and then starting from, again, almost the very beginning, moving me up pretty rapidly. I often say restaurants are one of the most, it’s such a beautiful industry because you really can start at any position and there’s opportunity if you’re flexible. And I was going to college, not only did they say you can do this, but they also helped me fill out my financial, my manager helped me fill out my financial aid forms for college because nobody in my family was saying You should go to college. But now I had this almost second family and kind of second home in this restaurant where I had this group kind of cheering for me and saying, we can help with that.
Which it was crazy. But the regulars in the restaurant, I still remember the managers that saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. I still remember to this day. And I do think that that has carried from the very beginning. It’s why I think restaurants are so special because I think people come into a restaurant to be seen. It’s food and sustenance, but it’s bigger than that. I’ve always believed that too, just from my early days, watching regulars come in, something they did every single day just to connect and be seen. So if I come completely full circle to the idea of being seen and how profound it is for me later in my career, the team that I was working with actually bought me a DNA kit because I would talk about being adopted, not knowing if I was actually Italian. My son was doing a family

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Freak

Kelli Valade:
Family tree project for school going, well, we don’t know anything about your side, the family, we have all this history on dad’s side. And I was talking to my team about it just a Monday morning around the water cooler talking about it. And my team came to me the next day with the 23 and Me Kit. Now, this part of the story is like seven and a half years old now. So those kits were pretty new. And then my team came to me and said, we bought this for you. Go take the kit. Go take the test and see if you’re telling, because you talk about it all the time. Clearly it matters to you whether you actually are Italian or not. I took that test and I found my birth parents within two weeks.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Oh my goodness.

Kelli Valade:
And I was not looking. I had looked before and had given up, and New York State was a closed state. And so I was not in that moment thinking. And at that point I was 47 years old and my whole world blew open because of it. So I often when given the chance, so when given the chance, and thank you for the question I often talk about, I was not holding up a sign. I was not saying I need to be found. And yet my team saw that in me and blew my whole world wide open in such a beautiful way. Wow. Yeah, it’s a pretty beautiful story. Yeah,

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
It’s pretty amazing. What was it like? So you met up with your parents or biological parents

Kelli Valade:
Two weeks later? Yeah, I would say it was amazing and overwhelming and scary and questioned everything about everything. They were high school sweethearts, so I never knew the story, never knew. I knew I was adopted. I never knew there was a million scenarios that could run through your head. And so when I met them and found out that they were high school sweethearts, they stayed together for a while. After I was born, I got a lot of questions answered. So within two weeks, they both came to Dallas, two different flights and met my family as I don’t do things subtly sometimes. So this was an example of we’re going all in on this, I have to know and find that out. So yeah, it was amazing. It was really amazing.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
That’s incredible. So what do we mean specifically by being seen? Because there’s kind of the authenticity at work bring your whole self to work movement. There’s recognition of work, there’s feedback. Tell me what exactly you mean by

Kelli Valade:
That. I think it’s all of that, right? Brene Brown would say being seen, right? Vulnerability is the courage to be seen is I think her definition. And I’m a big Brene Brown fan, aren’t we all? Yeah, who’s not right? But this for me was so profound.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
If you’re not, you have something seriously wrong with you, you should be

Kelli Valade:
Right. Yeah. And yet my story is my story. And it was always wrapped up in this idea of thinking that that’s where the real power is. So it is about being vulnerable to show your true self. It is about in the workplace, understanding that people bring their whole selves to work. They don’t just bring, they’re here for a lot of reasons and understanding their why, right? Understanding someone’s why to your first really profound question is a big deal and uncovers a lot. So I think in my career I’ve had an amazing opportunity to just work with lots of different leaders and feeling like you are seen is I think one of the most powerful things. Not that you get everything you ask for in your work or your role or whatever, but just having somebody that really does kind of see you and you have to be courageous enough to be seen.
I truly believe that too. I think women are uniquely more vulnerable that way. And in their willingness to do that and say, I don’t have all the answers. I think that’s an interesting trait women have. Some men have it too, but I think it’s a really interesting trait that some women have. So it’s all those things, whole self, well, mental health and wellbeing is huge for me, a huge passion of mine in terms of what are we doing to keep people whole? Because I found a bit of a refuge in not having a perfect home life at the time I turned 16. And that’s where most people that move up in restaurants, if we can’t keep people whole then and 18 to 24 year olds are the most lonely right now generationally. And the mental health stuff is a real crisis, I think. And so businesses, I think have to do something to keep people whole if we want to have leaders that go on to be CEOs after their first job in the restaurant business and fall in love with it.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Yeah, I mean that is true. I was just reading the State of the Nation national Progress report that was published by a professor at Tulane University. He got a bipartisan group of experts to join a committee to measure the most important metrics on how we’re doing as a nation and where US falls on economic prosperity and productivity is above almost every other country in the world, but we are worse than every other country in the world on youth depression, on suicide overdose. The thing is, let me play devil’s advocate on it. This is where I have gotten skeptical of the bring your whole self to work movement. Sometimes I’ll tell my story, I’m in recovery, and so my story is not totally understood by the common population. A lot of people see that as
They don’t necessarily see it for the way I see it. I think it’s one of my superpowers that I’m in recovery and I’m doing all this work on myself. Other people may think that I’m trying to not drink every day, which is not really what it’s like. So with bosses I’ve had in the past, I don’t feel like they had the understanding for me to bring that part of myself to work because I think they would just judge me or they would deem me unfit for a progression. So sometimes it feels like a setup where HR and people who have good intentions are like, be your authentic self, bring your whole self to work. But they don’t realize that the managers that we report into, they may have biases that make that a career limiting move. How do you address that issue?

Kelli Valade:
That’s fair. I think biases or feel ill-equipped to handle the conversation, right? It’s a fair question and I think it’s a fair question, and I think still we got to work on that. We leaders have to work on that. And again, to me personally, having worked in HR for much of my career too, unless there is some line crossed in the workplace and policies have to do with the workplace, that’s your whole beautiful self too. But I realize not everyone, there are still people that go, there’s work and that’s it. And I’m not equipped to talk about anything else. So I get that that is not something easily embraced everywhere, not just your, but just in general, people feeling not ill-equipped. We did something here and I didn’t create it when I joined Denny’s, there was something, and we’ve done it three years in a row, it’s called Go Beyond.
And it was a series of lessons and consider it. It’s a 30 day journey and basically a journal of sorts. And we did one year, we talked about microaggressions and diversity and inclusions when I joined, we’ve also focused on mental health in the conversations. And what we’ve done is open up the conversations to people being okay to say something like, I struggle with this. I struggle with anxiety. I am doing this to work on myself. And the permission to have the conversation is what’s been most powerful. And so we did it this last time, and then there were leaders that raised their hand that said, I’ll lead the circle, I’ll lead the conversation. So they picked up their journal that they had filled out, and then we’ve made them leadership circle conversations not led by me, led by actually my role at the end of the 30 days was to take people to lunch that had actually leaned in so hard and led some of the circles or we acknowledged people for starting a different conversation. And those conversations were, I struggle with this. I struggle with my mental health. So I think you have to make it okay. And I think in some cultures, in some organizations, maybe it isn’t okay to talk about any of those things and that doesn’t make that organization a bad organization. I know a few of those myself. They’re great companies, different culture, different approach,

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
And sometimes it’s okay in this part of the organization and not okay in that part of the organization, depending on the subculture perhaps. What impact did that have? Which of doing the go beyond the go beyond program, what was the impact at a larger results

Kelli Valade:
Level? So I get asked all the time. We leaned in pretty heavily on mental health. I joined the board of nami, national Alliance for Mental Illness of South Carolina. Our national headquarters are in South Carolina. So we’ve been doing things just embracing this and leaning into it. Denny’s had always been kind of giving back. We have a mobile relief diner. We’re out serving meals to people in LA two weeks ago. So we’ve always had a really good presence in doing that. And when I joined, it was asked about what was important to me in addition to the good things we were already doing. This was one of the things I talked about was just mental health and keeping people whole. And the youngest generation, if we can get ’em then and they can fall in love with the industry, you can get ’em for a lifetime. And so I think the strategy is about having somebody else talking about the ROI in terms of engagement, in terms of lower turnover, in terms of saying, if my CEO can talk about this stuff, then I am accepted here.
I am seen here. So we have tracked it in our engagement surveys for three years now, and we have really strong scores on some of those things. It doesn’t mean we don’t do hard things around here. It doesn’t mean we don’t have lower scores in certain areas on engagement, but that has been one where people really have raised their hand and said, I feel like I can talk about this here. At the end of the day, for me, some of it in terms of return on investment, yes, it’s about the branding and recruiting efforts of people saying good things or your Glassdoor ratings may be moving. But I do think there’s an epidemic and I think somebody’s got to be talking about it. So to some extent, tired of waking up and seeing bad things happen that are tied to mental health and people needing others to be talking about it. So it’s all those things. But we have seen some really good conversations.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
I mean, especially at that age, 18 to 24. I mean, my first job was working at a restaurant and it was my first time experiencing a community outside of my school or my theater group. I grew up in New York City, but I was in a community that was very set in stone. You go to this school, you do these activities, and it’s all the same people. And when I worked at a Mexican restaurant in Washington Square Park in downtown Manhattan, suddenly I had this entirely different world open up to me and friendships that it was a profound impact on my wellbeing, I think in a positive way. And I learned a lot just those relationships in that phase of learning a lot. It’s interesting. Absolutely formidable time right now. There’s so many headlines about Gen Z and how nobody wants to hire them, how they’re getting fired. I mean, this misunderstanding around Gen Z is really frustrating to me. What have you seen around that?

Kelli Valade:
So you’re speaking my language here. First, I’ll tell you on a personal level, I have two children. One is 24 living in Boston. She’s finished grad school looking to be gainfully employed somewhere soon. And then my son is 22, and my son is a history major. He goes to UMass Amherst. So brilliant in so many ways. Both of them are awesome. My son struggles with OCD and mild ish, but it’s something we learned a long time ago as a family and we work on as a family, and it’s something my son works really hard on at his mental wellbeing all the time. It’s all the time thing. It’s not moving pillows around and fluffing pillow. That’s not what OCD is, right? So we’ve learned a lot because of that. And so I study it a lot. I used to be in HR and I was an operator also, but my times in hr, I studied things just like you quoted, right?
US productivity, Sweden and Denmark, usually the happiest places on earth. The five elements of wellbeing from Tom Wrath written by a Gallup would tell you that the countries that thrive in all five areas are not the US by any means. So I was always kind of a geek about studying even before the pandemic, this idea that there was a potential for an epidemic around mental health and Gen Z in particular, given that obviously my two children are of that age group, but what I’ve watched and observed, and I literally have a presentation I’m going to do, it’s on my desk, I’ve got to finalize it later, but I’ll talk at a convention coming up in a couple of weeks about this very same thing. And when you Google Gen Z, just Google Gen Z, the things that pop up are social, pragmatic, connected, connected of all the technology, of course, things that you and I would both go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They’re not connected. They actually are the most lonely, and they actually struggle to make friends more than any other generation. And for as connected as they may be with phones and on Reddit and all these other channels, they’re not feeling like they have a lot of friends and they’re not feeling like it’s easy to make friends. So there’s such a misnomer about this generation. And then again, going back to the profound impact you had was the same profound, similarly profound for me on my first job. You can find a community, you can find people that have your back, and it exposures to so many different things. And that’s why I think we have to be talking about it because not every culture, not every company would do it. So Gen Z, they do, as my daughter’s looking for a job, the ones that are hybrid are a little more attractive to her. So there is an expectation that may be difference than I think we either have to adjust to or find common ground. I do think this is a generation that does want to be going back to what we started with, which is just being seen for who they are and being allowed to bring their whole selves to work for whatever that looks like in the organization.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
So what is your reaction to what’s happening with DEI right now at the Trump administration? I mean, I saw within a day they were painting over the FBI wall that had the word cloud, including words like inclusive and diversity. I mean DEI just nose dived. How are you dealing with that

Kelli Valade:
As an organization? We say we are America’s diner for today’s America.
We have an interesting history, some things that weren’t so pretty in the early history of this brand. This brand is 71, almost 72 years old now. And so for us, it is part of when you serve a diverse group of guests, it is part of our foundation. It’s part of who we are. So we’re doing the right things by our guests and by our employees and our team members. And I think from just hearing how much I’m talking about the whole self, you can imagine we’re progressive in other areas, just in areas related to our team members and our employees. So it’s a bit shocking and we’re following the same playbook we always have, which was this idea of embracing our team members and trying to help them bring their whole selves to work and then doing the right thing for our restaurants too, and the guests.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Yeah. So here’s the million dollar question, and we get this a lot from prospects that we’re talking to from new clients who don’t get it. How do you scale this? So how do you scale culture or being seen if that is your purpose and your culture, how do you do that all the way down to the front line when you’re at headquarters and your executive team is? How does that actually work at the scale that you’re operating at?

Kelli Valade:
Yeah, I totally great. Love this question. It’s a great question because it’s not easy. It’s absolutely not easy. So this is a franchise organization, so a little bit different in a franchise organization when we don’t own all the restaurants, we only own 61 and then we have a second brand, Kiki’s Breakfast Cafe. We own a handful of those. But when you’re a franchise organization, I think the same can apply to making sure those franchisees feel seen. They’re your customers, your partners in this. I’ll tell you one of the people I learned from a long time ago, it was Norman Brinker parents and took the company, Brinker International Public, and I worked there for 22 years. And I remember the story I would tell about the ability to see someone in such a profound way was a cab ride with him where he was the CEO at the time.
And I was 25, 24, 25 in the backseat of a cab headed to a convention. And somehow I ended up in the cab with him and I felt like I was the only person in the room, only person in the room. We were the only person in the cab, if you will. But he was in the backseat. He faced me in the backseat and he asked me about my life. He didn’t ask me where I worked in the company, didn’t ask me anything about my job, but faced me the entire time. And the conversation, it was a beautiful conversation from the beginning of the ride to the end. We never stopped talking. And I remember taking away, I later became the chief operating officer at Chili’s, and I told that story as soon as I got on a stage in terms of what it meant to me to have that conversation, but to feel seen in such a special way.
And we created this rally cry at the time, and it was in Life Magazine. There was a group of children. We created this idea of wouldn’t it be great to feel small again? And it was a group of children and they were laughing, running through a field, not a care in the world. My conversation was, and it was right after Norman Brinker had passed, actually took the stage and said, what if, no matter how big, it felt small. And that became a rally cry that every time we were together, I could be with a thousand people and there would be a way of just we see you or I see you, and there’d be unique things that we did to break down a thousand person general manager conference and have people still feel like things. So we wanted to make things intimate and wanted to make things up close and personal.
Personal. We got on a wellness journey and then we started someone with one leader took a runner’s group, I took yoga. That was my thing, still is. Another group took walkers and every morning they could get exposure. So just how do you make it feel small and not just be a thousand or so people? So you can do it. You have to get really creative on how you do it, and you have to find ways to get up from what you’re doing. I’m not perfect at this. I’m always a work in progress. Get up from what you’re doing, go ask someone about their day,

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Something simple. And that takes energy and time too, which can be, that’s the barrier to entry for great leadership is you have to commit to the energy and the time to do it. I’m thinking last week I did a keynote in Dallas actually, and the CEO of this company asked to meet with me the night before the keynote, which doesn’t usually happen. Usually I meet the keynote, the CEO O, that I’m keynoting for five minutes before I go on stage, maybe during the tech check if I do, sometimes they don’t even greet me. This person said, let’s meet beforehand. We met the night before, and we sit down and he says, so tell me about you. And so I’m thinking, he wants me to prove my credibility. Is Keynote immediately trying to say, well, I spent 10 years at Oracle and I have a doctoral degree, but I said, wait, what do you want to know about me? And he said, his response blew me away. He goes, what’s your bloodline? How did your parents meet? I’m like, you want to start that far back? And then we went through the whole chronology all the way up to, and my boyfriend hasn’t proposed, and I’m waiting and I’m talking to him about how do I get my boyfriend to propose?

Kelli Valade:
And

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
It was so rare. It was one of the most rare experiences I’ve had,

Kelli Valade:
Right? Because

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
People are stressed out. When they’re stressed out, they close down and they go inward and they don’t expand. It requires expansion. You have to expand yourself beyond your zone,

Kelli Valade:
Right? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Yeah. It’s not just the Gen Zers who are stressed either, right? I mean, these leaders are out here being quite stressed as well.

Kelli Valade:
Correct. But isn’t it funny that we’re just wired for, you must be asking me about my name, rank, and serial number and how profound to have somebody just ask you about you, right?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Yeah. And not even just me. Let’s start with your ancestry, right? Yeah. That’s

Kelli Valade:
Great.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Do you have favorite questions that you ask when you try and connect with people at that level?

Kelli Valade:
That’s a good question. Sometimes it is just finding something that is in common or asking about family and then learning about family learning and then remembering. So I’ve had some great leaders around me that just remembering people’s names and then remembering that their grandmother might’ve been ill, and just asking people about that. It’s amazing that people will just assume that I’m too busy to talk to somebody about something personal. Or if I’m in the women’s room and somebody’s got a cute outfit on, I’m going to stand there and talk about your cute outfit. I’m a girl too. So sometimes it is. I don’t know that I have any, when I’m out and talking to either franchisees or team members, and it’s a bit more formal. It’s just what do you want me to know? What do you want me to know that I don’t know? Or what should I know? Kind of your question that I know we’ll get to, which is what has nobody asked you? What should I ask you right now? What else do you want me to know? So a little bit about that one. It’s really trying to break through something that’s a little more formal around here. I think they would all tell you I’m pretty goofy and just come in trying to make connections throughout the day wherever I can when I’m getting up from my chair.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Yeah. So let me, on behalf of America, thank you for moons over my hammy. By the way, that is the best sandwich in the history of the planet. I will kill for moons over my ham sandwich at any given time. I mean, there’s nothing better. What is your favorite Denny’s item?

Kelli Valade:
I hope you know that this is a very true answer. Moons over my ham is the bomb.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Of course.

Kelli Valade:
Well, and I grew up on that. So my mom, back then, we used to go and sit and have coffee, and I have the same stories as a lot of people about after the bars closed, going to Denny’s in my hometown. But it was also where my mom and I would sit and have coffee moons over. Ham was mine, Superbird was hers. But I’ve always loved that sandwich. Absolutely always loved that sandwich. It’s not what I eat every time. We have some great fit options too, but moons over Miami is my crable go-to for sure. It is.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
I’ll eat that all day long. It doesn’t matter what the calories are, that is worth it. It’s worth the calories all

Kelli Valade:
Day long. Yes. It’s so credible.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
And so that kind of transitions into this is such an American brand, and I believe that brand and culture are inexorably intertwined, that your culture as your brand, your brand as your culture. If I had a bad experience with the wait staff at a Denny’s, that would mean that that would reflect the brand. And people understand, I think theoretically how employees experience and customer experience are linked, right? Sometimes it’s more obvious than others. But can you tell me about the responsibility of driving culture in order to support the brand given that the brand is so big?

Kelli Valade:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I often think about it. Brands and culture, you’re right. They one in the same. It’s, and also, brands are like people. They have personalities. They do good things. You know them for what they do. That’s really good. And a brand Denny’s, everybody knows something about, everybody has that story. Everybody has. And then you have your most recent experience like, oh, it, it’s been a while since I’ve been there. Is this good? Is it consistent? So a culture, I believe you work on culture, not because it isn’t the right thing to do, not because you don’t care about people, but you do work on culture to get a result and to move the brand forward. And so connecting people to the brand’s purpose or connecting people to what we’re doing and how it makes a difference, not just in sales and profits, but in the bigger picture and the good things that we can do.
And being out in la, those are huge sources of pride in a franchise organization. Every one of those franchisees has their own culture within their own organization signed on with us, but they also have their own businesses. And so I think the common thread we create together is what creates that consistency in a restaurant. And that keeps the brand saying, America’s diner for Today’s America, or saying, which we say all the time, our purpose. That started in 1953 with Harold Butler at the first Dan’s donut, Dan’s Donuts was what it was before it became Denny’s and started in LA rather. And part of the conversation we always have is about, we learned about our purpose through the founder and it’s really authentic. And the question was asked of him like, you created something that’s 24 7. That’s hard. Why’d you do that? Why Danny’s donuts? And then later, why do that 24 7?
That’s hard all night long. And he said, because I love to feed people. So the purpose that then evolved over time, that is written on everything that shows up everywhere for us, is that we love to feed people, but we’ve added, and this will make sense to you, we’ve added body, mind, and soul. So I didn’t add it. It’s a bit of what drew me to this company because as a CEO, you can be a lot of places. That to me said, there’s permission to think about the whole person, to think about whether I would be seen, not that A CEO, you could make a lot of change, but you can either move a culture against the grain or with the grain. And it said to me, there’s a culture here. There’s a passion here. There’s a love for feeding others, which I share. And then the idea of body, mind, and soul, like, whew, that’s awesome. And then we have that and we have those buckets of what are we doing for body? What are we doing for mind? What are we doing for soul? And the mental health stuff, as I talked about later or earlier, came flowed right from that. So they aren’t separate. You’re absolutely right. And every good or bad experience says they’re nailing it or they’ve lost their way or they’ve lost their culture. So super important to stay focused on what the culture does to drive the brand.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
So body, obviously Denny’s mind, obviously soul, that’s the rarer to see in a business context. What are you doing for

Kelli Valade:
Soul? Yeah, so I think soul, when we talk about going out and feeding others, you could say, I could just say that’s food. But when we go out and when we went out to, so we were just recently in LA with our mobile relief diner. It’s a 53 foot restaurant on wheels. I think when you see it, you might think it’s delivering food to a Denny’s. It’s actually delivering hundreds and hundreds and thousands of meals to people in need. And that’s what mobile relief. It’s a food truck. I have served where I could on that food truck, but we recently went to when Helene and Milton went to, at two places, South Carolina and then to Florida really quickly, we activate these things really quickly. And one of the things you learn when you go out work, the mobile relief diner, it’s pancakes and sausage and coffee, it’s basics.
It’s fundamental, basic food and sustenance that people needed because they had no running water in Asheville, North Carolina. But the other thing that you’re trained to do when you work the mobile relief diner is talk to them is create some sense of hope. Like we’re here for you and there are better days ahead. And that’s the training you would get from the team that’s on the truck that day. And then it was a beautiful moment for me to listen to the suggestions and the instructions I was given, which was make sure you see them. And those are my words. That’s not what was told to me. But what was told to me was this is a chance to regenerate people’s soul and provide some hope at a time where they’re probably not feeling like there’s a lot of reasons to be hopeful. And I just thought that was the most beautiful thing. I didn’t create that, right. I just walked into, here’s how we serve people today. And so I think you take some liberties with it, but I think that’s soul beyond food, beyond sustenance.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
That’s really beautiful. And I mean service. It’s how you feed the soul, right? Being service, my opinion, that is what being connected to a higher power is. It’s serving,

Kelli Valade:
Is serving others.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Yes. Something bigger than me. It’s really easy. Focus

Kelli Valade:
Something bigger than me

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
On me. And that’s why leadership is hard because people are so focused on them that they don’t take the time to connect and to see, I mean, it’s like seeing people is the soul part of it. Yeah. Yeah. No,

Kelli Valade:
Beautifully said. Beautifully

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Said. Well, you said it. I’m just rephrasing.

Kelli Valade:
I like your version of it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
So how does the Denny’s culture compare to you? Were at Red Lobster before and then Brinker before. Tell me how these different brands, which for the untrained eye might seem very similar, how do they differ?

Kelli Valade:
Well, I think for me, I think for whatever reason, one of the hallmarks of my career has been working with mature brands that everyone can tell a story about. And all three of those brands, you’d probably have a story as well, is the Denny’s moons over my hamming. And for some reason I see such power in that and this untapped potential that these iconic brands have and just happens to be what has ended up being kind of my life’s work, what they had in common. Chili’s had a Brinker and Chili’s, a very strong culture. The leaders that I got to work with there were amazing, the operators. So some of my best years and some of the best career years I had were certainly there. All my formidable, all of that. I started at 24 and was there 22 years, so a long time there, and really great culture there.
Red Lobster was interesting. Same thing, iconic brand. Lots of people would have a story about a Red Lobster, the leadership, all I will. So it was an interesting time, a little bit sensitive, and I want to be careful how I talk about it because what I saw there was great people and a great brands and just needing a bit more momentum and leadership that was consistent over time. And without, that was where the struggle came and the policies, the changes, all those things became hard and disconnected from a culture which they really loved, the Red Lobster brand. So need consistent, strong leaders and direction and strategy and investments. And so there was a strong culture there too. Strong culture doesn’t mean great culture. Strong culture. I mean it’s strong in this way. And all three of them had unique, really special things about the culture.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Interesting.

Kelli Valade:
Yeah,

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
You could read articles about Red Lobster. I mean, my only story, I’ve never actually eaten at a Red Lobster. Oh, really? I just read the articles about what happened with private equity and were you there during that?

Kelli Valade:
I was there that with the Thai Union group. So probably the stuff you read. And then again, I was only there seven months.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Right, okay. In and out. Yeah. And now you found your MINDBODY and Soul at Denny’s. I found

Kelli Valade:
MINDBODY and Soul after that. Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
It’s probably not a coincidence that Chili’s and Denny’s or clients of culture partners and Red Lobster was surprisingly not. Yeah.

Kelli Valade:
So I brought it for a little bit. I brought culture partners in at Red Lobster. I just wasn’t Oh, really? We weren’t. They’re a climate. I didn’t know that. No, no, no, they’re not. But I did bring ’em in at one point and brought, yeah, we had

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
That’s great.

Kelli Valade:
We had a day long session. Talked about a lot of what we’re talking about, but then I left soon after, so Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
And then they were moving on.

Kelli Valade:
Yeah, the

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Power of, let’s talk about shrimp again. That’s right. Yeah. The power

Kelli Valade:
Of culture and doing culture the right way. And what I learned via the OS principles was the game changer for me as a leader and a foundational tool. I think it’s an operating system. It’s an operating system. And so we’re still, we’re on that journey. It’s always a journey. We’re on that journey here and really excited about where it can take us if we lean even more heavily into it. So yeah.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
It’s so funny you say that because we just had an executive leadership retreat where our CEO, Joe Terry said, who are we? How do you describe who we are externally? And where I ended up was, it’s like we’re an operating system. It’s like a system that we will implement so you can get results. And then you just said it too, and it validates that I had a good idea because if you think that that’s an operating system, you have implemented it multiple times. Yes, it’s right.

Kelli Valade:
Yes. The power comes from when you actually can say, this is not a book. This is not something that this too shall pass. The beauty in having done it a couple different times was when it is the operating, it becomes the operating system. It’s just how you do them, right? Culture is how you do things around here. This is how we do things around here,

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Gets beyond the initiative

Kelli Valade:
And

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
The program, or certainly way beyond the training session

Kelli Valade:
Or

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
The keynote even, right? I’m the keynoter. So I go out and I have an hour, but really the hour is intended to educate, show people there’s a different way, and then also hopefully they call afterwards and say, can you show us how to implement that operating system you just talked about? And it has to be, programs have a beginning and an end. That’s why I think a lot of DEI efforts failed because they were treated as programs instead of the way we do things around

Kelli Valade:
Here. That’s right. Yep. Which is different,

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Right?

Kelli Valade:
Absolutely. Totally agree. One of the things we did, again in a prior life wasn’t, we didn’t, there wasn’t a one year. And now at Denny’s, our contract is not a one year contract. Now you could do that and say, well, I’m doing that to spread the, I’m not going to do it all one year. I look at that as I’ve got now a personal trainer in these partners. They’re not going to let us off the hook, not a one year thing. It’s not a program. And as it is, we’ve signed up for something that brings us continuity for the next several years. And yes, it spreads the budget out, but I see more benefit beyond that and not, you’re not just saying, all right, you know what, we’ll launch it this one day. Right. It has to go beyond that.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Yeah. Well, that’s beautiful. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me.

Kelli Valade:
Oh my God, of course.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
It’s totally inspired me. I struggle with seeing people because I’m so focused on, and I was a solopreneur, and then I sold my company to culture partners. And so I’m used to doing my lone wolf thing. And so I need the reminder because it’s not my natural tendency to be like, tell me more about you. I mean, I’m trying to prove that I can make it happen. And I’m coming from a good place, and a lot of my bosses have always appreciated that about me because I make it happen, but I’m missing something. And so I appreciate this reminder.

Kelli Valade:
I’m glad I found in talking to the thousand people again, when I was at Chili’s, that was the case. And now with franchisees that the more you do that, the more you get back.
Because someone will in turn, the more you share, even if it’s your vulnerabilities or something you wouldn’t always feel comfortable, is it’ll come back to you in just these beautiful ways. Or someone else then shares their story. My story about adoption was about adoption, but it was also, everyone’s got some kind of void. And it was about someone seeing that there was, again, something missing for me, and then it filled this void in such a beautiful way. So the more I told people about that, the more people translate it into something else. I called my mom. We haven’t spoken in 10 years. That’s not about adoption. It’s just about I decided that I should do something. So I think you get it back in so many ways. You get these just beautiful stories in return, humanity and souls. But you got to make time for it, because when the work gets hard is when it’s really hard to lift up and do that. Right. And you trust in good hands with it too.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
It makes the relationship more real because Absolutely. So many of the relationships in the work world are fake, right? Because they are transactional. Transactional. And so they’re not relational, therefore, they’re not relationships. They’re fake. They’re just, here’s what I have to give and what you have to give, and I will take this from you. And here we are. Yeah, absolutely. But we smile while we’re doing it. And so that can be exhausting. Yes, it can. Absolutely.

Kelli Valade:
Yes,

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
It can. Okay. So my last question and my favorite question is, what is something that you don’t get asked about very often in these interviews that you wish you were asked more often?

Kelli Valade:
So I couldn’t think of one. I’ve never been asked, but I did lean into one that I have been asked before that I actually really like, which is this very, what would you tell your 12-year-old self? Right? What would you tell them now? So I find it really fascinating to think about that or just to take a moment and just go, wow, I would tell her it’s all going to be okay. I was very serious and very intense, and family members, and my mom would say, you should just focus on being a kid of the oldest. And then again, so there was just interesting dynamics in my household, but I remember worrying a lot, right? I remember worrying a lot at that age and being a teenager and worrying about a lot of stuff, family, otherwise. And I would look back and say, you’re going to be exactly where you’re supposed to be, and it’s all going to work out and try and have some fun doing it. Try and not be so serious.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Isn’t that interesting? It’s just a lot of reassuring. It’s a lot of, you’re okay. It’s going to be okay. We could all use a little bit more of that, couldn’t we? Yes, yes.

Kelli Valade:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. You’re okay. That’s right. Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Well, thank you so much. This has been so lovely. I so much appreciate not only your leadership and learning from your leadership, but your advocacy for doing the right thing. Not because it’s the right thing, but also because guess what? It can get business results if you do it right, and it’s for getting business results. And that message of culture is not separate from results. The people are not, it’s not profitability versus people. It’s balancing those things so that everybody wins.

Kelli Valade:
That’s right. Absolutely. Well, it’s been a pleasure. Such a pleasure. And I’m so grateful that we got to do this. Thank you so much.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel:
Me too. Yeah.