The Denny's Charity Project

Yesterday, Denny's Restaurant offered free Grand Slam meals to anyone who saw their advertisements during the Super Bowl. The goal was to raise interest in their offering of breakfast combinations. As we are all big fans of free food; Dan, Dylan, Mike, Sean, and I decided to head down there to get our stomachs filled. We found the place packed, and lines reaching out the door. To our excitement, Denny's was also offering Rain Checks to anyone who wanted to participate in the promotion, but could not wait in line for the free Grand Slam. We gladly accepted the rain checks and departed, with intentions of returning.

While at Denny's today over our free Grand Slams; Dan, Dylan and I were conversing about the possibility of a charity promotion to support children in need and our love for Denny's food.

Our project, tentatively titled "Slam It Up With Kids" will have us living at a Dennys while donations pour in for a children's charity of our choice. Because Denny's is a twenty-four hour establishment with free Wi-Fi, we would be able to plug in a laptop and be able to track our progress as well as track the donations. We would set up a special blog account, a webcam, and a Twitter account to keep constant track of us while we perform our charity drive and "experiment."

Donations would be recieved and entered into the system and would extend the length of time we would be spending in the Denny's restaurant (a simple computer program could automatically increase the length of time we would be spending depending on how much people donated to the cause). A seperate plan for donations would consist of goals we would set for ourselves (e.g. Sampling every item on the menu; Not leaving the table for a specified period of time; How many shots of syrup Dylan can do in a row). These goals would be attributed with modifiers, so say someone wanted to donate $1 to the Menu Sampler goal with a modifier of x10, then if we were to reach the goal of sampling every item on the menu they would donate $10. This is almost like betting against us, that we won't be able to accomplish a goal, but will also push us to reach these goals so that we can see more money go to the charity.

The first obstacle in our endeavour would be to convince Denny's to allow us to perform the drive at one of their restaurants across the country. We would prefer to do it at a restaurant near where we live, perhaps at the Portland - Congress St. location or the Westbrook - Main St. location. The Congress St. Denny's has more space to afford us and has a more central location between the three of us. Not only that, but it was the Denny's where this idea was originally concieved. As well as being the place of employment for Dylan's "Pancake Princess," Kasandra. We believe that this idea would be a great and inexpensive way for Denny's to support a good family-based charity, as well as promote themselves across the nation. And we wouldn't say no to being fed Grand Slams during this time to help push their delicious breakfast combination.

After we convince Denny's to allow us to stay an indefinite period of time at one of their restaurants, we would have to start finding means to advertise the drive to find donations. Local and national radio stations could provide that service, as well as many popular websites also looking to help out a charity. Our own website, blog, and cam would help promote the drive, and we ourselves would work full-time to help get the word out using networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Craigslist, etc. that we need to help children across the country.

The last step of this all would be to take our equipment and selves in matching colored tracksuits over to the agreed destination and set up for a long meal. We would sleep in shifts, two staying awake and conversing or keeping Twitter and the Blog with updated and accurate information, while the other slept. During the day we would all eat Grand Slams and drink way too much coffee. We would keep up this pattern, occasionally taking a moment to use the restroom or converse with other patrons of the restaurant about the experiment. Donations will most likely also be accepted right inside the store as cash. Interested parties could sit and eat a meal with us for a donation to the cause as well as help update information and be seen on the live video feed.

Will this work? Could we pull it off? Only time and energy will see our plan into fruition. But we'll probably forget about it tomorrow.

- Caleb