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Waffle House!

Waffle House kind of joke

A fellow stopped at a rural gas station, filled his tank, and took a break by his car while drinking a soda.

As he relaxed, he watch a couple of men working along the roadside. One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along behind him by about 25 feet and filled in the hole.

The men worked right past the fellow with the soft drink and went on down the road.

Overcome by curiosity, the fellow headed for the first man. "Hey there," he said to the men. "Can you tell me what's going on here with this digging?"

"We work for the county government, " one of the men said.

"But one of you is digging a hole and the other is filling it up. Isn't that a waste of the county's money?"

"Well," one of the men replied, "normally there's three of us

me, Rodney, and Mike. I dig the hole, Rodney sticks in the tree, and Mike here puts the dirt back."

"Yeah," Mike added. "Just because Rodney's sick, that don't mean we can't work, does it?"

Waffle House

Waffle House is an iconic restaurant chain of about 1500 stores in 25 states of the United States. In Indiana the chain was at one time known as Waffle & Steak due to another restaurant owning the rights to the name "Waffle House" in that state.

Waffle House History

According to WaffleHouse.com, the Waffle House chain was founded by two neighbors, Joe Rogers, Sr., and Tom Forkner. Rogers had worked his way up in the Toddle House restaurant chain from line cook to executive before starting the Waffle House chain. Forkner handled the real estate and finance side of the business and Rogers stuck to the operational side. The first restaurant opened on Labor Day, 1955 at 2719 East College Avenue in Avondale Estates, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb. The success and loyal customer following led to rapid expansion throughout Georgia and neighboring states.

The concept was to provide the speed of a fast-food restaurant with inside seating. The name was chosen because waffles were the most profitable item on the menu. Other Waffle House locations offer both breakfast waffles and dessert waffles; when they opened two stores in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the stores quickly added "chicken and waffles", a long-time regional favorite food, with white meat chicken and gravy atop the waffle as an entree.

The original Waffle House no longer operates there; a Chinese restaurant occupied the building for a while, but today it stands vacant. The 1,000th Waffle House is located down the street, containing a plaque dedicated to the original restaurant. Waffle House headquarters are today in Norcross, Georgia.

Waffle House Unique attributes

Many Waffle House restaurants are found directly off of major interstate exits. Waffle House locations rarely have advertising budgets, instead drawing on word of mouth and their distinctive tall signs that can be seen for miles. Some Waffle House Operators have done limited advertising, including billboards and couponing.

Waffle House is best known for being open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and having a unique system for calling in orders, particularly with respect to hash browns. For example:

quarter plate = A hamburger with hash browns

scattered = hash browns scattered on the grill (not contained in a ring)

smothered = hash browns with onions

covered = hash browns covered in melted cheese

chunked = hash browns with ham

topped = hash browns with chili

diced = hash browns with tomatoes

peppered = hash browns with peppers (option added 1999)

capped = hash browns with mushrooms (option added 2000; not available in all areas)

Waffle House is also known for jukeboxes that contain songs specific to Waffle House like, "Why Would You Eat Your Grits Anyplace Else," "Come on In," "Good Food Fast," and "Special Lady (at the Waffle House)" in addition to the usual country and pop selections.

With increasing private and governmental restrictions on tobacco use, Waffle House restaurants have a reputation as a smokers' refuge. However, many states have now enacted smoking bans which completely prohibit smoking in restaurants, at least where minors are served. Because it is inexpensive, is open late at night, and serves breakfast 24 hours a day, Waffle House has also earned a place in the so-called stoner culture.

Waffle House has been known as a trucker's haven almost since its inception. Most locations have special parking lots designed with access to big rigs.

Waffle House Waffle House operations

Due to the high traffic at a typical Waffle House, the chain has developed a number of techniques to ensure that customers' orders are fulfilled efficiently and correctly. One technique is the abovementioned specialty lingo, in which the waitstaff calls out orders from a particular location in the restaurant using an exact terminology that allows the kitchen staff to prep the order. Each customer's table check is ordered by order preparation time, with items taking a long time listed first (steaks and chops, for example), and items taking little or no time (toast, for example) called out last. There are other variations of calling methodologies- one popular method involves calling out waffles first and then calling out each item in the order that it is placed in the grill line (meats, chicken, eggs and then hash browns) and leaving drinks uncalled (since the waitstaff prepares those separately from the cooking staff). The grill operator then repeats the called out order to confirm that it is correct.

Once the order has been called, the grill operator uses a system called "pull for production" wherein needed items (like bread and eggs) are pulled when the order is called so that they can be cooked a short time later. Similar systems are used by many short-order restaurants and diners.

Variations of this system have been developed as well, such as the "Magic Marker" system developed by a Waffle House grill operator named Michael Donnelly in Clanton, Alabama. In this system, in addition to the standard "pull for production" system, item orders are tracked by a notation system in which condiment packets are arranged on plates to indicate the final order (such as a jelly packet to indicate eggs, whereupon the packet's orientation on the plate determines how the eggs are to be cooked), with the goal being that the grill operator can simply glance at a plate to determine what needs to be done to fill the order. As of 1997, this marking system was adopted as the official system for all corporate-owned Waffle House locations. Many franchises still use the "pull for production" method, however.

Waffle House Payment

In a time when the majority of U.S. resturants and food-serving establishments were accepting credit cards such as Visa, American Express, and MasterCard, Waffle House was a cash-only business until recently. The company has never accepted checks. In early 2006, the company announced plans for some of its locations to begin accepting Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards.

Waffle House Indiana

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. However, as of the first quarter of 2006, former Waffle & Steak restaurants in Indianapolis, Anderson, and Shelbyville have replaced their Waffle & Steak signs with traditional Waffle House signs, while keeping the traditional Waffle House menus that they always served.

Waffle House Controversy

Partly in response to a serious salmonella problem in 2003 at Chili's Vernon Hills, Illinois location, and the four 1993 deaths from E. Coli in undercooked hamburger at Jack in the box, the Dateline NBC television news magazine reported in 2004 investigated sanitation practices of popular American family restaurant chains. The number of critical violations per inspection:

In response to the study, Waffle House pointed out that they prepare every one of 160 million meals per year in an open kitchen, as they have since 1955, and consumers can readily observe for themselves the care for sanitation.

Waffle House Trivia

The pop band Hootie and the Blowfish named an EP of theirs Scattered, Smothered and Covered in tribute to Waffle House. The heavy metal band Unsane has a full length album by the same title.

The band The Bloodhound Gang references Waffle House hash browns in a more risqu' sense ("smothered and covered") in their song "The Bad Touch." Waffle House is seen in the Britney Spears film Crossroads and also in the Kevin Costner movie Tin Cup.

"The highest counter seat closest to the cash register is the William E. Sasser chair. Endowed by an anonymous benefactor to the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration to the study and research of business management." This message hangs as a placard among the pictures of the edible offerings along the top of the walls.

In 1997, then-Alabama governor Fob James stated that the state government was inefficient and should be run "more like a Waffle House."

According to Fox 5 Atlanta Evening News on August 17, 2005, 2% of all eggs produced in the United States are served at a Waffle House.

Homestar Runner main page 5 makes a reference to the lingo. Behind the counter in every Waffle House there are two off-colored tiles or bricks in the floor to indicate where the wait staff is to stand when issuing orders to the short-order cook. This is intended to help create a more "diner-like" atmosphere. When no-slip mats are used to cover the floor, squares are painted onto the mats to indicate the position of the tiles. This is called "The Mark".

Waffle House is referenced negatively in the Insane Clown Posse's song "Still Stabbin'".

Waffle House is parodied in the film The Ladykillers. The characters are attending a Waffle Hut made to be the ever famous Waffle House.

The remix of the song "Welcome to Atlanta" by Jermaine Dupri begins "After the party/it's the Waffle House".

A lyric from Jay-Z's "Do It Again (Put Ya Hands Up)" mentions a 4:00 AM stop at a Waffle House.

The diner where the characters in Showtime's Dead Like Me gather is a Bavarian-themed breakfast joint called "Der Waffle Haus".

An edited image of the Waffle House sign, changed to read Rofl House (see image), is sometimes used as an image macro.




Much of the content on this page was obtained from the Wikipedia, which is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.