Waffle House

WH Capital, L.L.C., doing business as Waffle House, is an American restaurant chain with 1,900 locations in 25 states in the United States. Most of the locations are in the South, where the chain is a regional cultural icon. Waffle House is headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Plaque commemorating the first Waffle House restaurant

History

The first Waffle House opened on Labor Day weekend in 1955 at 2719 East College Avenue in Avondale Estates, Georgia. That restaurant was conceived and founded by Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner. Rogers started in the restaurant business as a short-order cook in 1947 at the Toddle House in New Haven, Connecticut. By 1949, he became a regional manager with the now-defunct Memphis-based Toddle House chain, then he moved to Atlanta. He met Tom Forkner while buying a house from him in Avondale Estates.

The first Waffle House restaurant (now a museum), Avondale Estates, Georgia. Note original "syrupy" font on the sign.

Rogers's concept was to combine the speed of fast food with table service with around-the-clock availability.

Forkner suggested naming the restaurant "Waffle House", as waffles were the most profitable item on the 16-item menu.

Rogers continued to work with Toddle House, and to avoid conflict of interest, sold his interest to Forkner in 1956. In 1960, when Rogers asked to buy into Toddle House, and they refused, he moved back to Atlanta and rejoined Waffle House, now a chain of three restaurants, to run restaurant operations. Shortly after Joe returned full-time, Tom followed suit and left Ben S. Forkner Realty.

After opening a fourth restaurant in 1960, the company began franchising its restaurants and slowly grew to 27 stores by the late 1960s, before growth accelerated. The founders limit their involvement in management, and as of 2013, Joe Rogers Jr. was CEO and retired late 2013, and Bert Thornton is president.

In 2007, Waffle House repurchased the original restaurant, which was sold by the chain in the early 1970s. The company restored it using original blueprints for use as a private company museum. The museum is used primarily for internal corporate events and tours.

In 2008, one of the biggest Waffle House franchises in the southeast, North Lake Foods, was bought out by Waffle House, Inc. North Lake Foods filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and closed some stores. Waffle House, Inc. plans to rehabilitate the franchise. In early 2009, East Coast Waffles bought North Lake Foods to become a new franchise.

The founders of the Waffle House brand died in 2017 within less than two months of each other: Joe Rogers Sr. died on March 3 and Tom Forkner on April 26.

Operations

Each Waffle House location is open 24 hours daily, up to 365 days annually. This schedule has inspired the urban myth that "Waffle House doors have no locks".

A Waffle from Waffle House

The chain's restaurants almost always have jukeboxes, which have traditionally played 45-rpm singles and, in some cases, CDs. Waffle House has released music through its own record label, Waffle Records. It has released songs from "Saturday Night At My Place" by Gary Garcia released in 1995 to "They're Cooking Up My Order" by Alfreda Gerald released in 2006. The co-founder Joe Rogers had high standards and said, "If it sounded like a commercial, it got the ax." If the song makes the cut it'll be recorded and make its way to Waffle House jukeboxes. The songs are on ordinary discs, which are produced for Waffle House and are not commercially sold, but the chain has made a CD of some of the songs available for sale.

The servers use a proprietary version of diner lingo to call in orders, and the menu suggests some use of the same lingo when placing orders for hash brown potatoes: "scattered" (spread on the grill), "smothered" (with onions), "covered" (with cheese), "chunked" (with diced ham), "diced" (with diced tomatoes), "peppered" (with jalapeño peppers), "capped" (with mushrooms), "topped" (with chili), and "all the way" (with all available toppings). The option of "country" was added for hash browns with sausage gravy on them. Additionally, the company has a symbolic code by which grill operators are told the specific orders that go on each customer's plate; a 2017 ESPN.com story gave the following overview of this code:

Using accoutrements such as jelly packets, mayonnaise packets, pickles, cheese and hash brown pieces, grill operators are told what orders go on which plates. A jelly packet at the bottom of the plate signifies scrambled eggs. Raisin toast is signified by a packet of apple butter. A mustard packet facing up means a pork chop. Face-down means country ham. A pat of butter is a T-bone, and its place on the plate determines how the steak cooked, from well done at the top to rare at the bottom.

The company claims to be the world's largest seller of several of its menu items—the namesake waffles, ham, pork chops, grits, and T-bone steaks. It also claims that it serves 2% of all eggs in the U.S.

In the 1960s, S. Truett Cathy, the owner of a local diner called the Dwarf House, contracted with Waffle House to sell his proprietary chicken sandwich, the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. However, the Chick-fil-A sandwich quickly overtook Waffle House's own items in sales and Waffle House ended the deal, prompting Cathy to spin off Chick-fil-A into its own chain.