Anil Yadav, who arrived in the United States from India as a teenager and started out frying food at Jack in the Box, has completed a $620 million acquisition of Denny's with TriArtisan Capital and Treville Capital Group.

The deal gives Yadav control of one of the country’s best-known diner chains and adds another major brand to a portfolio he has built over three decades in restaurants. He said Denny’s is everywhere, has been in the space for 60-plus years and remains an iconic American brand.

Yadav’s path to the purchase began at age 24, when friends and family helped him buy his first Jack in the Box location. He later worked his way up from fry cook to manager to franchisee, and said revenue at that first store rose from $850,000 to $2 million. By 2020, he was one of the largest multi-unit franchisees for Jack in the Box, TGI Fridays and Denny’s.

That rise also made him a front-row witness to how the pandemic split the restaurant business in two. His full-service restaurants sat closed and dark while drive-thru brands captured demand, pushing him to think harder about formats that move faster and cost less to run. Yadav Enterprises later acquired Taco Cabana, a Mexican brand with 140 locations and more than 40 years in business, and became the franchisor behind Nick the Greek, which now has more than 90 restaurants, and Del Taco, which has 600 open locations.

The Denny’s purchase fits that pattern. Yadav said the brand still relies on paper pads for orders, and his team is looking at handheld technology, the app and curbside pickup. For a chain with a long history and a familiar name, the question now is not whether it is recognizable, but whether it can be updated fast enough to keep pace with a restaurant industry that has already moved on from the era that made it famous.

Yadav’s bet is that the answer is yes.