10 Things You Didn't Know About Waffle House

Everything you could possibly want to know about the beloved 24/7 diner chain.

Alison Herman

Few chains combine cult appeal and massive scale quite like Waffle House, the (mostly) Southern diner chain famous for its neon-yellow signage and dirt-cheap breakfast foods. With almost 1,700 locations in 25 states, almost everyone has paid a visit to Waffle House, but there’s more to the restaurant than smothered hash browns and 3am fourthmeals. We dug up some of the more obscure bits of Waffle House lore, from the origins of its name to the surprising contents of its jukeboxes. Enter here for a comprehensive survey of everything Waffle House, including the reason why a closed Waffle House is cause to be very afraid.

FEMA uses a “Waffle House Index" to size up natural disasters.

Waffle House is legendary for never closing...like, ever. So when a storm forces a location to close its doors, you know things are dire. Hence the "Waffle House Index," an informal measure of disaster severity ranging from red (restaurant is closed) to yellow (open, but with a limited menu) to green (restaurant is open). Since Waffle House locations tend to be located in hurricane- and tornado-prone Southern states, the chain tends to be unusually well-prepared for extreme weather, meaning that the index rarely makes it to red—and when it does, it's serious.
The chain's original location is now a museum.

Co-founded in 1955 by neighbors Tom Forkner and Joe Rogers, Sr., the very first Waffle House is located outside Atlanta in Avondale Estates, GA. Hard-core devotees can still make a pilgrimage to the place where it all began, kept in perpetual mint condition as the official Waffle House Museum. The fully functioning restaurant, which the chain bought back in 2007 after selling in the 1970s, is tricked out with memorabilia, biweekly tours, and—most importantly—cool-looking vintage cars.
Fifty years and more than 1,600 locations adds up to a whole lot of food.

There's an endearing section of Waffle House's website breaking down the mind-boggling quanitity of food the chain dishes out year to year. For example, in its 50-plus years of existence, Waffle House has served more than 130 million T-bone steaks and almost two billion orders of hash browns. In a single year, it sells enough bacon to wrap around the equator, as well eight Olympic swimming pools' worth of coffee. As for waffles, its various locations dish out a 145 a minute. Large-scale production never ceases to amaze.
Not all locations are open 24 hours a day.

Actually, just one isn't: Waffle House's newest location, opened inside Atlanta's Turner Field just this past month. The outpost serves a relatively limited menu of waffles and hash browns in various styles to hungry Braves fans. Not that it makes sense to have a ballpark location stay open all night, but the exception spells the end of an era nonetheless—Waffle House has always been known for its 'round-the-clock hours.
Every Waffle House jukebox comes with original songs.

What better to accompany your plate of smothered hashbrowns than the dulcet tones of Jerry Buckner's "Waffle Do Wop"? Other selections available to customers nationwide include "There Are Raisins In My Toast," "844,739 Ways to Eat a Hamburger," "Make Mine With Cheese," and "They're Cooking Up My Order." Waffle House: Jukebox Favorites Vol. 2 is available for purchase on Waffle House's website for just $10. All proceeds go to the Marcus Autism Center.
Waffle House is either the best workplace on Earth...

As part of its recent Greasy Spoons Week, Eater Atlanta interviewed Waffle House "lifer" Tonya Rinehart, a server who's worked at the restaurant for more than 16 years. Rinehart makes life as a Waffle House employee sound like a blast, full of $50 Christmas tips and regulars who buy their waitress a Dodge Durango just for being nice. Rinehart describes her role as a cross between "a friend, a therapist, an actress, [and] a mom," which sounds kind of like how Joan Holloway describes the perfect secretary on Mad Men, though Rinehart says it's enormously rewarding.
...or one of the worst.

Also on Eater, one former Louisville-area employee tells a very different story. According to Sam Price, the Waffle House clientele is a bizarre menagerie of meth heads and criminals, while the employees aren't much better, stealing from the restaurant on a regular basis. Considering Price once saw the chain hire a guy who was publicly arrested inside the restaurant, that doesn't come as much of a surprise.
Waffle House is named after its most profitable menu item.

Forkner and Rogers opted to call their fledgling restaurant Waffle House in an attempt to encourage customers to order the menu item that yielded the most profit. The second, less cynical reason for the name was the message it sent: You can't take out waffles, meaning the Waffle House was a strictly sit-down establishment. Unfortunately, early customers mistakenly thought the chain only served breakfast items, meaning it was easy for them to miss out on the filet mignon Forker and Rogers initially sold at the bargain price of $1.50 a pop.
The restaurant isn't big on change.

The 24/7 operating schedule has been in place since day one, and the menu has remained untouched except for the addition of salads and sandwich wraps (and the removal of that dirt-cheap filet mignon). Most important is the cash-only policy that the company held onto religiously until 2006: Credit cards were too slow, threatening to throw off Waffle House's legendary 20-minute turnaround time. Which is how an entire building at corporate headquarters ended up dedicated to the "Poor Old Cash Customer Who Made It All Possible."
Waffle House has its own lingo.

It wasn't officially added to the menu until the 1980s, but customers are now encouraged to order their hashbrowns "chunked" (with chunks of ham), "capped" (with mushrooms), or "country" (with gravy). Careful not to confuse "smothered" (onions) with "covered" (cheese).

10 Things You Didn't Know About Waffle House

FEMA uses a “Waffle House Index" to size up natural disasters.

The chain's original location is now a museum.

Fifty years and more than 1,600 locations adds up to a whole lot of food.

Not all locations are open 24 hours a day.

Every Waffle House jukebox comes with original songs.

Waffle House is either the best workplace on Earth...

...or one of the worst.

Waffle House is named after its most profitable menu item.

The restaurant isn't big on change.

Waffle House has its own lingo.

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