(“Today is the tomorrow you were worried about yesterday!”) Tom kind of looks like a wiry Bill Clinton he plays the straight man, waiting for his opening. is tall and cracks jokes and says he never worries about a daggone thing. The founders are still alive, very much so-nearly ninety now but altogether kicking. We want it to be your home away from home.” “At Waffle House, everybody talks to everybody. “There’s no class distinction at Waffle House,” added Joe Rogers Sr. “All our food is cooked up front and right in sight,” Tom Forkner said the other day. But industry analysts have put annual sales at $325 million. Waffle House declines to talk about how much money they make-it’s a private company. Either way, the cash registers are smokin’. Pick the grilled chicken salad if you want. ![]() Steak and eggs plus a waffle plus country ham plus cheese grits plus maybe just one little slice of Southern pecan pie, for instance. ![]() ![]() A waffle the size of a hubcap: $2.55 (add pecans, 45 cents.) ( Note: These prices reflect 2007.) the menu contains ninety-five base items, plus meal deals, plus beverages, plus endless possibilities for gluttonous combinations. Today’s burgers go for $1.25 to $3.55 (for a double cheeseburger). You can still eat to the popping point on less than ten bucks. Or Waffle King, whatever that is.Ī photo posted by Waffle House Official on at 8:46am PDTįorget about the drunks, though. Unless you’ve held at least one after-after-after party at Waffle House, you cannot, in the American South, be considered a legitimate drinker. If Waffle House were to shut its doors, the nation would be awash in hungry drunks. In the tipsy demographic alone, the chain probably makes a fortune. The familiar yellow flow draws the shift workers, cops, college kids, brunchers, vacationers, meemaws and papaws, musicians, truckers, and the alcoholically impaired. Meant to convey affordability, cleanliness, and friendliness, the design improved upon the original logo of wavy black letters, which looked less like the intended effect of poured syrup than an ad for a haunted house. In the sixties, a friend of Tom’s designed the logo of today: the bright yellow blocks with plain black letters, as simple as Scrabble tiles and as pop-culturally ingenious as the smiley face. ( Editor’s Note: The Waffle House museum opened in 2010.) You will never be able to eat so much as a grit there, but the museum will open at certain times for corporate and community events, where visitors will be able to see more than a half-century’s worth of menus, uniforms, photos, and other memorabilia, much of which harks to certain older-timers’ fondest topic of conversation: the era when a cup of coffee set a fella back ten cents and a whole homemade pie cost a dollar.įrom the urban strips like Buford Highway to interstate outposts, Waffle House beams right up there with the rest of commercialized America-with the Exxons and Burger Kings and KFCs-but with such a stripped-down unpretentiousness as to almost be invisible. As you read this, the original Waffle House, at 2719 East College Avenue, is being renovated as the Waffle House museum. But not long ago, Waffle House bought the building back. and Tom had to close “number one.” They sold the building-it became a Chinese restaurant and later a second-hand tire store. Years later, when I-20 came in and a bunch of roads got moved, Joe Sr. Waffle House opened Labor Day weekend, 1955. They opted for waffles as opposed to a white-tablecloth, prime-rib kind of place because waffles felt warmer, friendlier, more family-like, and they cost less to make. Tom found a location on East College Avenue, a main thoroughfare between Atlanta and eastern Georgia. ![]() and Tom decided to partner in the restaurant business. bought a home on Stratford Road from a real estate man named Tom Forkner, a former lawyer who also lived on Stratford and whose father supervised the construction of Avondale Estates. A photo posted by Waffle House Official on at 11:39am PSTĪvondale Estates, the English-inspired planned city founded in 1924 just east of Decatur, is where it all started.
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