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Waffle House is a restaurant chain with 1500 stores found in twenty-five states in the United States.^[1] The "low-rent roadside cafe featuring waffles"^[2] (as characterized by screenwriter Ron Shelton) claims to be 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, and Heinz Traditional Steak Sauce.^[3] Most of the locations are in the Southern United States where the chain remains a regional cultural icon.^[4]

Contents 1 History 2 Waffle & Steak 3 Controversies 3.1 Race relations 3.2 Dateline NBC investigation 4 Iconic status 5 References 6 External links

The first Waffle House^[5] opened on Labor Day weekend, 1955 at 2719 East College Avenue^[5] just outside Avondale Estates, Georgia.^[1] That restaurant was owned by Joe Rogers, Sr. and Tom Forkner, grandfather of Daniel Forkner, who continue to operate the chain today.^[1] Rogers had started in the restaurant business as a short-order cook in 1947, at the Toddle House in New Haven, Connecticut.^[6] By 1949, he had become a regional manager^[4] with the now-defunct Memphis-based Toddle House chain, and was moving to Atlanta. He met Tom Forkner by buying a house from him in Avondale Estates.^[1]

Fast food was the new thing in the early 1950s. The first store in the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain opened in 1952,^[7], and by 1954, when Ray Kroc met Richard and Maurice McDonald, there were already eight McDonald's locations.^[8] Rogers' concept was to marry the speed of fast food with table service. He walked down to Forkner's house, two doors from his home, and “He said, ’You build a restaurant and I’ll show you how to run it,”’ recalls Tom Forkner.^[4]

They painted their new building yellow, to catch motorists' eyes.^[4] Forkner suggested naming it Waffle House, as waffles were the most profitable item on the 16-item menu.^[4] The flimsy nature of waffles also made the point that it was a dine-in, not a carry-out, restaurant, but it made it difficult to let patrons know they could get burgers or a steak, not just breakfast, any hour of the day or night.^[4]

Rogers continued to work with Toddle House, and to avoid a conflict of interests sold his interest to Forkner in 1956.^[6] In 1960, when Rogers asked to buy in to Toddle House, and they refused, he moved back to Atlanta and rejoined Waffle House, now a chain of three restaurants, to run restaurant operations.^[6]

After opening a fourth restaurant in 1960, the company began franchising their restaurants^[4] and slowly grew to 27 stores by the late 1960s, before growth accelerated.^[4] The company is privately held and doesn’t disclose annual sales figures, but says they serve 2% of the eggs used in the nation's food service industry.^[4] The founders limit their involvement in management, with Joe Rogers, Jr. heading the company.^[4]

For years, Waffle House was known as "Waffle & Steak" in Indiana due to another chain of restaurants owning the rights to the Waffle House name in the state.^[9] Presumably, the original Indiana Waffle House chain has started using the name "Sunshine Cafe".^[10]

However, the d/b/a for "Sunshine Cafe" belongs to "Waffle House Greenwood Inc.", established in 1981.^[11] The oldest "Waffle House" entity listed with the Corporations office of the Indiana Secretary of State is "Waffle House of Bloomington, Indiana Inc." established in 1967, and like Waffle House Greenwood, it's still an active corporation.^[11] (Many of the Waffle House corporations in Indiana have been dissolved.) "Waffle House Inc." of Norcross, Georgia registered with Indiana in 1974.^[11]

In January 2005, customers in four southern states filed suit against Waffle House for racial discrimination.^[4] In their complaint, they asserted that servers announced they wouldn’t serve blacks, that the servers deliberately served unsanitary food to minority patrons, that servers directed racial epithets at blacks and that servers became verbally abusive when asked to wait on blacks.^[4] Juries exonerated Waffle House in the first two cases, and the plaintiffs were ordered to pay Waffle House's legal costs.^[12] In August, 2005, a Virginia Waffle House operator settled the lawsuits filed by 12 black, Asian-American and Hispanic patrons.

Racism accusations represent a turnabout for the company. In 1960, when civil rights demonstrators were picketing many Atlanta businesses, many other businesses closed, but when Rogers had seen demonstrators gathering outside a Waffle House, he walked outside, and invited the demonstrators to come in and eat.^[6]

Apparently inspired by a serious salmonella problem in 2003 at Chili's Vernon Hills, Illinois location,^[13] and the four 1993 deaths from E. Coli in undercooked hamburger at Jack in the Box,^[14] the Dateline NBC television news magazine in 2004 investigated sanitation practices of popular American family restaurant chains, measuring the number of critical violations per inspection. The Waffle House averaged 1.6 critical violations per inspection^[15]. Waffle House's response to the study pointed out that they prepare all meals in an open kitchen, and consumers can readily observe their sanitation practices themselves^[16].

Much as other open-all-night eateries have (including White Castle, Denny's and Krispy Kreme), Waffle House has developed into a cultural icon. Jim Ridley wrote in 1997, "The Waffle House is everywhere in the South. It has inspired country songs, comedy routines, loving editorials, a scene in the movie Tin Cup, even Web sites and Internet newsgroups that breathlessly post late-breaking developments. With more than 1,200 locations in 20 states, as far north as Ohio and as far west as Arizona, Waffle House is cherished by thousands of diners. Regular customers speak of its employees, its customs, and its food with near reverence. Touring musicians have been known to eat five meals a week there. And yet the Waffle House is so pervasive it's invisible. It doesn't advertise; it hides in plain sight." ^[17]

The chain's waitresses not only use diner lingo to call in orders, but the menu suggests you use the same lingo in placing your order for hashed brown potatoes: "scattered" (spread out on the grill), "smothered" (with onions), "covered" (with cheese), "chunked" (with diced ham), "diced" (with diced tomatoes), "peppered" (with jalapeno peppers), "capped" (with mushrooms) and "topped" (with chili).^[18] This, in and of itself, has also made its way into popular culture: The Bloodhound Gang mentions that in their song "The Bad Touch", and Scattered, Smothered and Covered is the title of an album by Hootie & the Blowfish.

The chain is thought to be the inspiration for the Der Waffle Haus diner that figures prominently in the cable series Dead Like Me.

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Waffle House history
2. ^ "Tin Cup" script
3. ^ Waffle House fun facts
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Waffle House still dishin’ diner food at 50
5. ^ ^{a b} Then and now photos of Waffle House #1.
6. ^ ^{a b c d} Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 24, 2004
7. ^ Fast Food Nation
8. ^ Corporate Crime > McDonald's
9. ^ The NecroKonicon
10. ^ Bomp
11. ^ ^{a b c} Indiana Corporations search
12. ^ Waffle House press release
13. ^ Salmonella at Chili's
14. ^ Jack in the Box deaths
15. ^ Dateline NBC report
16. ^ Waffle House responds to Dateline
17. ^ Arts & Leisure: The Mysterious, Mundane Magic of Waffle House
18. ^ Waffle House menu/placemat

• Official site
• The first Waffle House restaurant as seen in a then/now photo.
• EEOC vs. Waffle House, Inc.
• Waffle House Fouders - then and now