Waffle House is a restaurant chain, iconic in the modern culture of the Southern United States.
History
According to WaffleHouse.com, the Waffle House chain was founded by two neighbors, Joe Rogers, Sr., and Tom Forkner. Rogers had worked his way up in the Toddle House restaurant chain from line cook to executive before starting the Waffle House chain. Forkner handled the real estate and finance side of the business and Rogers stuck to the operational side. The first restaurant opened on Labor Day, 1955 at 2719 East College Avenue in Avondale Estates, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb. The success and loyal customer following led to rapid expansion throughout Georgia and neighboring states.
The original Waffle House no longer operates there. The 1,000th Waffle House is located down the street, however. Waffle House headquarters are today in Norcross, Georgia.
Waffle House restaurants in Atlanta were among the first restaurants to serve black customers. Following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, riots broke out in some cities, and many Atlanta businesses closed out of fear of similar rioting. Waffle House did not close, however, and cofounder Rogers later was thanked by black leaders. In early 2005 a group called the Washington Lawyers' Committee filed discrimination suits in federal court, claiming systematic discriminatory practices and violations of civil rights laws. According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, six of the most recent cases, juries found no acts of discrimination.
THE WAFFLE HOUSE STORY
When Joe Rogers, Sr. bought a house from Tom Forkner in Avondale Estates, GA in 1949, neither one knew where that relationship would take them. In 1955, the two opened a small restaurant with the goal of serving quality food to their neighbors. Through the years, they added a restaurant here and a restaurant there, and now 50 years later that small chain of restaurants has multiplied into today’s Waffle House system of more than 1,500 restaurants in 25 states.
“We wanted a restaurant for our friends to come in and eat and visit with us,” Joe remembered.
“It seemed like a good idea for that first restaurant,” recalled Tom. “It worked there and we then started opening new restaurants when we had the money, someone to run it and a great ___location.”
They started the Waffle House experience of restaurants where friends would gather for quality food and quality conversation but not burn a hole in their wallets. They delivered personalized, friendly service by asking their employees to follow some simple rules that are still followed today like “To win friends, be one,” “A smile makes the food taste better,” and “Who’s looking out for the Poor Old Cash Customer?”
Their second mission was “A company is known by the people it keeps.” They wanted to treat their employees like family. So, to reward their employees who took care of the customer, they offered the opportunity to own stock in the company.
“Tom and I are not the ones who made this happen. It was the folks behind the counter taking care of the customer,” Joe said. “We just provided an opportunity for them to be successful.”
“I never thought that first restaurant would grow into what it is today,” Tom added. “But I’m proud that it did.”
The two can be proud their legacy continues. They still visit restaurants to ensure the Waffle House standards they started of taking care of both the customers and associates continue in every restaurant today.
As we celebrate our 50th year in 2005, the 30,000 Waffle House associates salute our two founders and are very proud to continue their high standards of service to our customers now and for the next 50 years.
Unique attributes
Waffle House resteraunts are almost always to be found directly off of a major interstate exit. Waffle House locations actually have no advertising budgets, instead drawing on word of mouth and their distinctive tall signs that can be seen for miles on the interstate.
Waffle House is best known for being open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and having a unique system for calling in orders, particularly with respect to hash browns. For example:
- quarter plate = A hamburger with hash browns
- scattered = hash browns scattered (not in a ring)
- smothered = hash browns with onions
- covered = hash browns covered in melted cheese
- chunked = hash browns with ham
- topped = hash browns with chili
- diced = hash browns with tomatoes
- peppered = hash browns with peppers (option added 1999)
- capped = hash browns with mushrooms (option added 2000; not available in all areas)
Waffle House is also known for jukeboxes that contain songs specific to Waffle House like, "Why Would You Eat Your Grits Anyplace Else," "Come on In," "Good Food Fast," and "Special Lady (at the Waffle House)" in addition to the usual country and pop selections. [1]
Waffle House operations
Due to the high traffic at a typical Waffle House, the chain has developed a number of techniques to ensure that customers' orders are fulfilled efficiently and correctly. One technique is the abovementioned specialty lingo, in which the waitstaff calls out orders from a particular ___location in the restaurant using an exact terminology that allows the kitchen staff to prep the order. Each customer's table check is ordered by order preparation time, with items taking a long time listed first (steaks and chops, for example), and items taking little or no time (drinks, for example) called out last. There are other variations of calling methodologies- one popular method involves calling out waffles first and then calling out each item in the order that it is placed in the grill line (meats, chicken, eggs and then hash browns) and leaving drinks uncalled (since the waitstaff prepares those separately from the cooking staff). The grill operator then repeats the called out order to confirm that it is correct.
Once the order has been called, the grill operator uses a system called "pull for production" wherein needed items (like bread and eggs) are pulled when the order is called so that they can be cooked a short time later. Similar systems are used by many short-order restaurants and diners.
Variations of this system have been developed as well, such as the "Magic Marker" system developed by a Waffle House grill operator named Michael Donnelly in Clanton, Alabama. In this system, in addition to the standard "pull for production" system, item orders are tracked by a notation system in which condiment packets are arranged on plates to indicate the final order (such as a jelly packet to indicate eggs, whereupon the packet's orientation on the plate determines how the eggs are to be cooked), with the goal being that the grill operator can simply glance at a plate to determine what needs to be done to fill the order. As of 1997, this marking system was adopted as the official system for all corporate-owned Waffle House locations. Many franchises still use the "pull for production" method, however.
Waffle House Employee Rules
They may seem a bit corny now, but they included such sincere, good-intentioned phrases such as "A smile makes the food tastes better" and "To win friends, be one." The original Waffle House owners were certainly friends to their employees, offering them the opportunity to own stock in the successful company.
Payment
In a time when the majority of U.S. resturants and food-serving establishments were accepting credit cards such as Visa, American Express, and MasterCard, Waffle House was a cash-only business until recently. The company has never accepted checks. In early 2006, the company announced plans for some of its locations to begin accepting Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards.
Trivia
- The pop band Hootie and the Blowfish named an EP of theirs Scattered, Smothered and Covered in tribute to Waffle House. The heavy metal band Unsane has a full length album by the same title.
- The band The Bloodhound Gang references Waffle House hash browns in a more risqué sense ("smothered and covered") in their song "The Bad Touch."
- Waffle House is seen in the Britney Spears film Crossroads and also in the Kevin Costner movie Tin Cup.
- "The highest counter seat closest to the cash register is the William E. Sasser chair. Endowed by an anonymous benefactor to the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration to the study and research of business management." —This message hangs as a placard among the pictures of the edible offerings along the top of the walls.
- In 1997, then-Alabama governor Fob James stated that the state government was inefficient and should be run "more like a Waffle House."
- According to Fox 5 Atlanta Evening News on August 17, 2005, 2% of all eggs produced in the United States are served at a Waffle House.
- Homestar Runner main page 5 makes a reference to the lingo. [2]
- Behind the counter in every Waffle House there are two off-colored tiles or bricks in the floor to indicate where the wait staff is to stand when issuing orders to the short-order cook. This is intended to help create a more "diner-like" atmosphere. When no-slip mats are used to cover the floor, squares are painted onto the mats to indicate the position of the tiles.
FUN FACTS
Since 1955, the WAFFLE HOUSE system has served:
495,264,367 Waffles 957,041,599 Cups of Coffee 1,173,838,328 Hashbrown Orders 370,545,935 Sausage Patties 786,449,152 Bacon Strips 14,899,594 Slices of Ham 1,527,602,959.24 Eggs 22,217,455 Slices of Pie 123,587,123 T-bone Steaks 115,220,427 Hamburger Quarters 479,312,699 Glasses of Coke 1,108,574,633 Order of Grits 72,567,509 Cheese n’ Eggs 204,164,660 Omelets
Did you Know?
If you lay all of the Bryan bacon end-to-end that Waffle House serves in a year, it will stretch from Atlanta to Los Angeles seven times! (That's more than 21,000 miles of bacon) If you could stack all of the sausage patties we serve in one day, it would reach the TOP of the Empire State Building! (Did you want grits with that?) Waffle House serves more than 3.2 million pounds of grits each year. That is enough to fill 86 semi-trucks!
Each year Waffle House customers eat more than 334,000 pounds of pecans in their waffles. Which is more than 21 million pecans.
Waffle House customers consume 2% of the total eggs produced in the United States for foodservice use. That is more than 185,000,000 eggs every year - 500,000 eggs everyday - 20,833 eggs every hour - 347 eggs every minute and five eggs every second.
If you used all of the eggs Waffle House serves in a year to make a cheese omelet, it would weigh 28 tons and would need 185 million slices of cheese. (Do you want hashbrowns with that?)
If you lined up all the bowls of Bert's ChiliT Waffle House serves in a year, it would stretch the length of Florida's coastline on both the Atlantic and the Gulf!
Waffle House serves more than 10,000 T-bone steaks every day.
If you stack all of the USDA Choice hamburger patties Waffle House serves in a year, it would equal the height of 18 Mount Everest!
Waffle House serves more than 381 tons of country ham every year. That translates to more weight than a fully loaded Boeing 747 at takeoff.
- The first Waffle House® restaurant opened on Labor Day in 1955 in Avondale Estates, GA
- The Waffle House System operates more than 1,470 restaurants in 25 states.
- Waffle House® restaurants are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (including Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's).
FOOD FACTS
The Waffle House System is the world's leading server of:
- waffles
- T-bone steaks
- omelets
- cheese 'n eggs
- USDA Choice hamburgers
- country ham
- pork chops
- grits - hashbrowns
- patty melts
- raisin toast
- apple butter
- Heinz Traditional Steak Sauce The Waffle House System only serves the best brands including:
- Coca-Cola soft drinks
- Heinz complete line of sauces
- Sara Lee family of pork products
- Bryan bacon, ham and country ham
- Jimmy Dean Sausage
- Minute Maid Orange Juice
- Wishbone salad dressings
- Waffle House Classic Blend Coffee
- Waffles made with White Lily Flour
- Challenged to a test, Waffle House® restaurants have found at least 70,778,880 different ways to prepare its USDA Choice hamburgers.
- The Waffle House System has served more than 442,451,500 waffles (and counting!) since 1955.
- Waffle House® restaurants serve more than 95 million cups of coffee each year.
THE WAFFLE HOUSE EXPERIENCE
- Waffle House® restaurants are the only place where you can hear classic waffle songs "Good Food Fast," "Waffle Doo Wop" and "Waffle House Family" on a real jukebox.
- Although there is one "official" website, an Internet search turns up more than 2,200 Web sites that mention Waffle House® restaurants.. Waffle House® restaurants ranked in the "Top Five" of "Around the Clock Eats" on the Food Network.
- Bert's Chili™ and our world famous hashbrowns were featured on "Sara's Secrets" on the Food Network.
- Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy are seen eating at a Waffle House® restaurant in their 2003 movie, Blue Collar Comedy Tour - The Movie.
- A Waffle House® restaurant is featured in a scene in the 2002 Britney Spears movie "Crossroads."
- The R & B group "112" filmed their "It's Over Now" video at a Snellville, GA, Waffle House restaurant.
- Hootie and the Blowfish released a CD in 2000 entitled: "Scattered, Smothered &Covered" and pictured a Waffle House® restaurant on the cover.
- After enjoying a meal at a Destin, Fla., Waffle House restaurant, TV talk show host Rosie O'Donnell flew a grill operator and two salespeople to New York to be on her show in December 2000. They presented her a "Waffles for Life" certificate.
- A Waffle House® restaurant is prominently featured in a scene of "Tin Cup," a feature film starring Kevin Costner.
- A sampling of the many other celebrities seen eating in a Waffle House® restaurant:
- Marty Stuart
- Merle Haggard
- Beyonce Knowles
- Reese Witherspoon
- Former President George Bush
- Emmitt Smith
- LeAnne Rimes
- Pete Sampras
- Billy Bob Thornton
- Ludicris
- Vince Gill
- Amy Grant
- Faith Hill
- Sean "P. Diddy" Combs
- Jeff Foxworthy
- Mark Wills
- David Toms
- Kenny Chesney
- Usher
- Jay-Z
With the help of a number of well-known Waffle House fans, the restaurant has worked its way into the cultural fabric of America. The southern comedian Jeff Foxworthy has long been a fan of the Waffle House, and in the 2003 film Blue Collar Comedy Tour—The Movie, he and his Waffle House colleagues Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White, and Bill Engvall were filmed eating at a Waffle House. The restaurant also made a cameo appearance in the Britney Spears movie Crossroads (2002) and played an integral role in the comedy Tin Cup (1996), which starred Kevin Costner, Don Johnson, and Rene Russo. The South Carolina–based rock band Hootie and the Blowfish released a CD in 2000 entitled Scattered, Smothered and Covered, with a photo of a Waffle House prominently placed on the album's cover, and the restaurant's popular hashbrowns were showcased on a Food Network episode of Sara's Secrets, starring Sara Moulton, a cookbook author and television chef.
The jukebox has been an important fixture in Waffle House lore, and in 1984 the company produced its own song—"Waffle House Family, Part 1"—for play in restaurants. Other songs have subsequently been released, including "844,739 Ways" (referencing the many ways to prepare a hamburger), "Special Lady" (dedicated to female employees), "It's Waffle House Time," and "Make Mine with Cheese."
In addition to its own Web site, thousands of sites are devoted to the Waffle House, with content ranging from anecdotes and recipe tips to political commentary, poetry, essays, and news on various customers who were so rooted to the restaurant that weddings and even funerals have been held there.