Its website has a ticker that will tell you just how many bacon strips, hash browns, waffles, coffee cups, and hamburgers the chain serves every minute. Waffle House has gotten into Twitter battles over the superiority of its American-style waffles over Belgians and has trademarked its own Waffle House-themed songs. This exclamation point-filled braggadocio is typical of the chain, which is impressively proud of its product. "If you laid all of the Smithfield Bacon that Waffle House® serves in a year, end-to-end, it would wrap all the way around the equator! That’s over 25,000 miles of a Bacon Belt!! If you could stack all of the Sausage Patties that Waffle House® serves in one day on top of each other, it would be nearly twice the size of the World’s Tallest Building, Burj Khalifa in Dubai or four times the size of the Empire State Building! Now that’s a tall order! If you poured all of the cups of Coffee that Waffle House® serves in one year, it would be enough to fill nearly 8 Olympic swimming pools!" Today, there are 2,100 locations in 25 states, which means you can now eat the same Waffle House waffles in Goodyear, AZ, Austinberg, OH, and Key West, FL.Īnd each of those locations serves a lot of food. By the end of the 1970s, there were over 400 Waffle Houses across the Southeast. During the 1960s, Waffle House became a franchise and growth exploded. By 1957, Rogers and Forkner had opened a second location by 1961, there were four in the Atlanta area. Waffle House originally made all of its products from scratch, with three exceptions: Post cereals (above), Heinz ketchup, and Coca-Cola sodas.īut Rogers and Forker had hit a sweet spot. They say they had little intention of expanding. It would be a friendly restaurant, offering “GOOD FOOD FAST”® at cheap prices. The plan was that Waffle House would serve breakfast foods, primarily waffles and hash browns, plus diner staples like patty melts and ham steaks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. and Tom Forkner, had left careers in chain restaurant management and real estate, respectively, to open what they later deemed “A Unique American Phenomenon”®. That very first Waffle House opened over Labor Day weekend 1955, the same year Roy Kroc joined McDonald’s and transformed the American dining scene. It opened in the ‘90s, right across the street from the very first Waffle House, which was sold in the ‘70s, operated as a mediocre Chinese restaurant, and later turned into the country’s only Waffle House museum. Mine is Unit #1000 on East College Avenue in Avondale Estates, GA. Perfect alongside nut-studded malty waffles, which are also always better when they’re served extra crispy.Įveryone has their own personal Waffle House. I especially cherish the meals when the toast shows up “kinda burnt” - the copious sugar in the bread caramelizes to make a salty-sweet treat. My standard order is a pecan waffle with a side of raisin toast, both of which I slather with whatever brand of salted fake butter they bring to the table. A few benches along the side wall served as a resting spot for customers who just wanted a coffee. The first Waffle House had only counter seating, which has been reproduced in the Waffle House museum in Avondale Estates, Georgia. (They didn’t.) As we grew older, we’d show up to the Athens or West Atlanta location in the middle of the afternoon on New Year’s Day, praying that hash browns would soothe our stomachs and unlimited coffee would cure our hangovers. It was a crucial halfway point between events and our homes, where we could sop up all those Bud Lights, gossip, try to find out if Sam or David or Brandon liked us. In high school, we’d go to Waffle House after football games or illicit backyard parties or when we were bored. I have been this customer more times than I care to admit. After an hour or so, they stumble out and wander home, bellies full of grease and salt. They pack into booths, spilling out onto the floor with laughter or slurring or both. ( Atlanta alone has more than 250 locations.) The customers smash buttons on the jukebox, order their hash browns “all the way,” and dance in the aisles until waitresses bring their platters of breakfast foods, served on ceramic plates with a decorative brown border. They’re easy to find: drive along any interstate in the region and you’ll likely see one or two at each exit. Bars close and spill their tipsy patrons out into Ubers and Lyfts and city buses, and they travel in droves to the nearest yellow-signed building. In Waffle Houses across the southeast, the second rush begins around 2 a.m.
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