One of Portland’s favorite places to eat breakfast and comfort food 24/7 has announced it is permanently closed.

The Denny’s restaurant at 1091 Congress Street, in the city’s Libbytown neighborhood, is closed and won’t be reopening, according the restaurant’s Facebook page.

A spokesman for the national restaurant chain told News Center Maine that the building has been sold and once that happened the restaurant was forced to close. Denny’s had been renting the location.

The building will be used for a different purpose, but it was not clear what that might be. An email sent to Denny’s media relations department Sunday evening was not answered.

“We’re committed to taking care of our team members. We transferred our restaurant management team to the Auburn location, and each of our impacted crew members have been offered roles at our other locations in Augusta, Bangor and Auburn,” the spokesperson for Denny’s told News Center Maine.

Denny’s operates restaurants on Court Street in Auburn, on Civic Center Drive in Augusta, and Haskell Road in Bangor, according to its website. Its restaurants in Biddeford and Ellsworth closed in May 2020, during the start of COVID-19 pandemic. A Denny’s restaurant on Brighton Avenue in Portland, near the Westbrook town line, closed in 2018. The Brighton Avenue restaurant opened in 1973.

Denny’s began as Danny’s Doughnuts in Lakewood, California, in 1953, and later evolved to Denny’s. Today, the restaurant chain is headquartered in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with more than 1,700 restaurant locations worldwide.


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