Which restaurant has its own natural disaster index, secret potato code,
and big love from big names? If you guessed Waffle House, you're right!
Back in 1955, the very first Waffle House opened as a 24-hour diner in a
suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. Founded by neighbors Joe Rogers and Tom Forkner,
only Rogers had restaurant experience – he had previously been a cook at a diner called
the Toddle House – while Forkner worked in real estate. Their concept for Waffle House
was simple – make and serve comfort food in a way that made diners feel at home.
"It's meats, starch, and sugar, butter, grease. Everything that's comforting and wonderful."
Naming the restaurant after the most popular item on the menu – waffles – Rogers and Forkner's
initial dream involved opening just one location. But after the original Waffle House's success,
they decided to open a second location just two years later. By the time the 1960s rolled around,
new locations were opening at a rapid pace. Today, Waffle House boasts nearly 2,000 restaurants!
Waffle House restaurants are all open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That commitment
to staying open all the time even applies in areas suffering from natural disasters,
like hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods. Waffle House actually uses portable generators to keep
restaurants running through power outages and studies its responses to previous disasters
to learn how it can do better in the future. Staying open as much as possible helps give
Waffle House customers a place of refuge in difficult times, while also allowing the
company's employees to continue earning money instead of losing wages to restaurant closures.
So you know if a Waffle House is planning to close, the area is probably
about to experience some extremely scary weather. In fact, according to USA Today,
Waffle House's emergency preparedness is so widely renowned that it spawned an
unofficial way of measuring the severity of a natural disaster: the Waffle House Index.
This index was created in 2011 by FEMA, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"It sounded silly to us too,
but we're actually flattered that they talk about us in such high regard."
The Waffle House Index uses a three-color system – red, yellow, and green. Green means
that all Waffle Houses are operating fully, so you probably don't have to worry. Yellow means
that Waffle House may have to run a limited menu or run off of generator power. And red
means you should get out of town because all the Waffle Houses are closing down!
You probably already know what Waffle House sells – classic comfort foods like grits,
hash browns, and, of course, waffles! But it might surprise you that the company has a side business,
creating a very different kind of product: music! Yup, it turns out that Waffle House
has a record label! The chain has actually been making music since the 1980s. These
Waffle House songs are put onto the in-house jukeboxes located at every Waffle House.
"I found out that waffle house has jukeboxes, and on the jukebox are songs about the Waffle House!"
And while the songs on the jukebox do indeed reference Waffle House and the delicious food you
can get there, they're far from jingles or ads – they are real songs, in a variety of genres.
Most of these songs sound like hits you might hear on the radio – but if you listen closely,
you can catch the Waffle House references! There's even a yearly Waffle House music awards show
called the "Tunies." And the awards statue is shaped like – you guessed it – a golden waffle.
"One dream that I wanted to have was to have a song on the waffle house jukebox."
In the '80s, Waffle House's songs were pressed on real 45 rpm records and inserted into the
jukeboxes at the restaurants. These days, they're still playing on Waffle House jukeboxes,
but everything has gone digital. The custom Waffle House songs aren't quite as popular
as the other songs on the jukeboxes, but they do get played. The chain has also
made music videos that are available to view on the Waffle House website.
There is no doubt that the Waffle House chain has created its own unique culture.
And nowhere is that more apparent than in the terminology used for ordering hash browns,
which can be quite confusing to a Waffle House newcomer. You might not think of hash browns as
being a complicated dish — aren't they just crispy shredded potatoes? And while you can
order plain hash browns, true Waffle House fans just love adding a variety of toppings
to trick out their shredded spuds. Each topping has its own special Waffle House-specific name.
Plain hash browns are "scattered" because the potatoes are simply spread over the
grill. "Smothered" means adding griddled onions. A slice of American Cheese makes them "covered."
"I go scattered, smothered, covered, chunked."
According to Waffle House, there are now over a million possible hash brown variations you can
order, and we are up to the challenge, but our favorite version remains the "country"
customization – creamy sausage gravy poured on top of the crispy potatoes. And though
the concept of customized hash browns are now synonymous with Waffle House,
they didn't become a thing until the 1980s. But how did it all start? Legend has it the
creative hash brown-ery began in the Atlanta-area Waffle Houses,
where line cooks would whip up their own magical hash brown creations as treats for themselves.
The unique hash brown lingo isn't the only Waffle House communication innovation. The
servers also give customer orders to the cooks in a surprising manner. Rather than
simply calling out the orders verbally or relying on printed tickets to communicate,
employees at Waffle House are trained to use something called the "mark system." The mark
system uses objects like condiment packets, cheese, slices of bread, and utensils to
tell the grill cooks what they need to cook next, with no talking or reading necessary.
"Madam, we must have waffles. We must all have waffles forthwith."
To order a waffle using the mark system,
a server places a butter packet on the plate. A mustard packet, however, signals a pork chop,
while a packet of grape jelly means white toast. And it gets even more complicated than that,
because the position and orientation of the objects changes their meaning. A grape
jelly by itself means toast, but if it's on the right side of an oval plate, it means a sausage
omelet. A mayo packet on top of a packet of jelly means eggs scrambled well, while an upside-down
mayo packet on top of butter means a dark waffle. Strange as it may seem, the fact that Waffle
House chefs are able to cook food so quickly and accurately using this arcane system is impressive!
Waffle House has long resisted the move toward a cashless society. As Joe Rogers told the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2004, Waffle House's mission has always been taking care of
the cash customer. In fact, the company didn't even start accepting card payments until 2006.
Waffle House's commitment to cash doesn't stop with its customers,
either. Reviews from Waffle House employees on job-review websites indicate that workers
can also get paid in cash if they choose. In 2017, a Waffle House waitress wrote a
review on "Glassdoor" reporting how employees are paid weekly, in cash. And another Waffle
House employee on the same site described receiving Christmas bonuses in cash. Waffle
House employee reports on the jobsite "Indeed" verified this information, writing a review
describing how employees can choose to be paid in cash, by direct deposit, or with a cash card.
"Show me the money!!"
We should note that since some of these reviews are older,
there is a possibility that the company no longer offers cash compensation to employees.
It really shouldn't be a surprise that celebrities love the restaurant
just as much as regular folks do. After all, the food may be simple,
but it's tasty and it makes you feel good. One of the most famous people to
sing Waffle House's praises was the late chef, writer, and television star Anthony Bourdain.
"I had all of those things, but more important
than anything I discovered the glories of the Waffle House."
Anthony Bourdain truly loved Waffle House and waxed poetic about it during his visit,
recorded for his CNN food and travel show "Parts Unknown." He described it in a way only he could.
"It's warm, yellow glow, a beacon of hope and salvation, inviting the hungry, the lost,
the seriously hammered all across the South to come inside, a place of safety and nourishment."
And who could forget actress, model, and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen's Waffle House insta moment
with her husband, musician John Legend? And famous rappers, too, have a particular Waffle House love,
frequently shouting out their adoration for the chain in song. They also post pics of themselves
at the restaurant – like this one from 2015, with Outkast's Big Boi, Andre 3000, and Kanye West,
or this one, with DJ Khaled, Busta Rhymes, and some very happy Waffle House employees.
In 2019, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked local rappers attending the Super Bowl
to name their favorite Waffle House orders. Ludacris mentioned a patty melt with cheese,
and some of those famous hash browns.
"Hash browns scattered, smothered, covered, all that good stuff."
Further down the red carpet, all three members of Migos had their own Waffle
House faves – Quavo repping the All-Star Meal, Offset favoring the Texas Melt,
and Takeoff opting for waffles with a pork chop on the side. But perhaps the most creative answer
came from Lil Yachty, who said he liked to make a bacon, butter, and jelly sandwich on Texas toast.
Videos of Waffle House fights are a known entity on social media, especially Tik Tok. You can even
find Waffle House fight compilations on YouTube. It's not that Waffle House is cultivating an
unsafe environment – it just happens to operate thousands of restaurants that are open 24 hours
a day, including the wee small hours of the morning. And in the middle of the night,
you're bound to encounter a few, uh, inebriated people – some of them spoiling for a fight.
One thing you'll notice in these Waffle House fight videos is that when customers get violent,
employees showcase some impressive fighting skills. The fighting prowess of Waffle House
employees has been the source of a lot of Twitter humor. One tweet
joked that Waffle House requires employees to know how to fight,
while another claimed part of the application process involved the question – 'can you fight?'
"I know Kung Fu."
Another Tweet basically summed up the internet's opinion, stating how Waffle House employees are
the undefeated heavyweight champions of the world. But all jokes aside, nobody wants to
experience violence at work, and some of these fights look pretty scary. It's hard not to root
for the Waffle House employees when they have to deal with unpleasant and violent people.
Waffle House's incredible amount of success over the years is even more impressive when
you learn that the company has almost no traditional advertising – instead,
people tend to learn about the chain from other people. In addition to this
word-of-mouth marketing strategy, Waffle House also reels in customers by designing
their restaurants to be quite visible from a distance – especially their large,
iconic, yellow signs. Another technique is to place the restaurants close to busy highways,
where hungry travelers can't miss them! It's worth noting that Waffle House expanded in
tandem with the U.S. interstate highway system in the mid-20th century. With these highways bringing
in steady streams of customers, the company was able to grow, opening more and more restaurants
across the American South. And then, as America's roadside food options settled into a now-familiar
landscape of fast food drive-thrus, Waffle House set itself apart by offering old-school
diner service that has remained basically unchanged since its founding in 1955.
Working at Waffle House can be a tough job in many respects. You have to work nights,
weekends, and holidays, the restaurant is frequently busy,
and the customers can sometimes, as we've shown, get a little bit out of hand. It's
certainly not a job for everyone. But the gig has some amazing perks, too.
"The stock options are incredible,
all of the benefits, health insurance, life insurance, dental."
Waffle House works hard to retain employees going above and beyond the industry norm. For example,
the company has been offering health insurance since the 1980s,
which is a rarity in the restaurant industry. Waffle House also promotes
people exclusively from within, rather than hiring outsiders.
"I'm a unit manager now, but I started off as a salesperson."
The company also offers stock options to employees, and cooks earn bonuses based on
how much food they prepare each day. And managers are guaranteed a six days on,
two days off work schedule. In an industry with notoriously unpredictable scheduling practices,
this kind of stability is a huge draw. Another uncommon benefit in the service
industry is that both managers and hourly workers get paid time off.
From how they treat their employees to the way they prepare their food, Waffle House is,
without a doubt, a unique spot. And while there are other breakfast chains out there,
like IHOP and Denny's, none seem to inspire the devotion that Waffle House does. But if
watching this video has given you a craving for Waffle House, and you live in the Midwest,
on the West coast, or pretty much anywhere in the Mountain time zone,
be warned – you'll need to plan a road trip. Because scattered,
covered or smothered – you won't find too many Waffle Houses beyond the southern United States.
Unfortunately, Waffle House has generated bad press and lawsuits related to claims of
harassment and racism. According to Newsweek, Waffle House has been sued at least 10 times
for racial discrimination over the past 40 years. And in 2018, Inc. Magazine quoted this statement
from the NAACP, after four separate incidents of discrimination and attacks came to light:
"We're once again outraged by a video showing police officers using excessive force on an
unarmed, non-violent African-American Waffle House customer. Once again this incident was
sparked when a Waffle House employee called the police after the patron allegedly complained
about customer service. And once again the police responded with violence."
That same year, Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, Bernice King, also called for
customers to boycott Waffle House after a string of incidents, while more recently,
non-white customers at Waffle House locations in Florida and Georgia were allegedly
subjected to racial slurs and threats.
"Those protesters – they're calling for
a boycott of Waffle House until they see some changes in the restaurant group."
However, Waffle House co-founder Joe Rogers didn't view his business as racist. He told The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution in 2004 that Waffle House served black civil rights protestors in the '60s
during a time when many Atlanta-area businesses denied them service. It should also be noted
that the incidents discussed here occurred at specific Waffle House locations and may
not reflect the company as a whole. However, the frequency and number of allegations is troubling.