I feel like I can always count on Denny’s. If I’m hungry for breakfast after sleeping in on the weekend, Denny’s serves it all the time. If I’m craving a late-night meal after a night out on the town, Denny’s is still open. It’s such a recognizable restaurant chain, and that’s one of the reasons we’re fired up that the chain has adopted our LED lighting as its preferred lighting standard for all its new and remodeled stores across the United States.

 So when new Denny’s restaurants are built or older ones are up for remodeling, owners will turn to Cree LR6 LED downlights instead of incandescent, fluorescent or any other kind of LED lights.

Cree LR6 LED downlights line the ceilings of this Colorado Denny's.

Our LR6 LED downlight is just that. It’s one of those lights you would screw into a recessed can lighting fixture. These fixtures are common in restaurants, retail shops and even newer homes. Start looking up when you’re out dining or shopping and you won’t believe how many dot the ceilings.

Denny’s corporate architect Mitch Riese says our fixture was chosen because of the quality of light it delivers (the last thing any restaurant needs is bad lighting), its long life (it’s designed to last 50,000 hours) and its energy savings (each light consumes only 10.5 Watts).

“We evaluated numerous LED light fixtures from a variety of manufacturers to ensure that we chose the best possible product and partner for this major lighting specification,” explained Riese, corporate architect and senior manager of design & construction for Denny’s. “With the Cree LR6 fixture, we found the best value for our money, helping us deliver beautiful, warm light, while significantly reducing our energy consumption and maintenance requirements.”

One of the believers is Denny’s franchise owner Pete LaBarre. When I first spoke with him a year ago, he had installed 340 Cree LR6 LED lights in four of the restaurants he owns in the Colorado Springs, Colorado area. When we checked back in with him recently he had installed more than 400 of the lights in the dining rooms of his five restaurants. He says his six-inch LED downlights are saving him around $15,500 per year in energy costs alone and that he has seen a payback of between 20 to 24 months, (depending on the electricity provider for each of his restaurants).

Cree LED lights line the ceiling in one of the Denny's restaurants Pete owns.

And he’s not stopping there, Pete has decided to replace 500 fluorescent bulbs and tubes with 200 Cree LR6 fixtures, illuminating the perimeter of each restaurant.

“Our lights stay on all the time, so we did a watt comparison of what we had in place before the LR6 downlights,” LaBarre said. “We found that we used 6,000 kilowatt hours less per month in the store that had the Cree fixtures versus the store that had the fluorescent lighting,” he said.

It’s cool to see quality LED lighting is making its way into more restaurants. It just goes to show that LED lighting is ready and that energy-wasting incandescent lights are best used in restaurants for one purpose – as heat lamps keeping your food warm.