Waffle House: Chick-fil-A's Ouster, Waffle Records and the FEMA Index

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Waffle House opened on Labor Day weekend 1955 in Avondale Estates, Georgia, with a 16-item menu, an open kitchen and 24-hour service. Founders Joe Rogers Sr., a former Toddle House short-order cook and regional manager, and Tom Forkner, the real estate agent who sold him a house, named it for its most profitable item. Rogers sold his share to Forkner in 1956 to avoid a conflict with Toddle House, then rejoined full time in 1960 after Toddle House refused to let him buy in. With three restaurants then, the chain grew to 27 by the late 1960s and now runs over 2,000 locations in 25 states, claiming to serve 2 percent of all U.S. eggs.

In the 1960s Waffle House sold S. Truett Cathy's chicken sandwich from his Dwarf House, then ended the deal when it began outselling Waffle House's own food, pushing Cathy to launch Chick-fil-A. In Indiana, locations used the name Waffle and Steak until 2005 because another company held the trademark. Rogers personally vetted songs for Waffle Records, its jukebox label. A 2004 Dateline NBC report found 1.6 critical violations per inspection, and the company cited its open kitchens in response. FEMA counts Waffle House among the top four companies in disaster response and uses the Waffle House Index, which reads green, yellow or red.

• Servers call orders to the grill in a standardized code before writing them down.
• Waffle Records released songs by Gary Garcia in 1995 and Alfreda Gerald in 2006, plus doo-wop by Eddie Middleton produced by Jerry Buckner.
• An early fan site called the Waffle House Shrine collected late-night stories from staff and customers.
• In 2019 a Goose Creek, South Carolina location closed after an employee exposed customers to hepatitis A.
• Before storms the company stages generators, ice and food and sends out-of-state jump teams so local staff can stay home.