MapMuse - Locate Waffle House Near You

...raisin toast, apple butter, and Heinz Traditional Steak Sauce. Most of the locations are in the Southern United States, where the chain remains a regional cultural icon.

History

The first Waffle House opened on Labor Day weekend, 1955 at 2719 East College Avenue just outside Avondale Estates, Georgia. That restaurant was owned by Joe Rogers, Sr. and Tom Forkner, who both continue to operate the chain today. Rogers had started in the restaurant business as a short-order cook in 1947, at the Toddle House in New Haven, Connecticut. By 1949, he had become a regional manager[3] 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.

Fast food was the new thing in the early 1950s. The first store in the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain opened in 1952, and by 1954, when Ray Kroc met Richard and Maurice McDonald, there were already eight McDonald's locations. Rogers' concept was to marry the speed of fast food with table service and around the clock availability. 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.

They painted their new building yellow, to catch motorists' eyes. Forkner suggested naming it Waffle House, as waffles were the most profitable item on the 16-item menu. 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.

Rogers continued to work with Toddle House, and to avoid a conflict of interests sold his interest to Forkner in 1956. 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.

After opening a fourth restaurant in 1960, the company began franchising their restaurants and slowly grew to 27 stores by the late 1960s, before growth accelerated. 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. The founders limit their involvement in management, with Joe Rogers, Jr. heading the company as CEO, and Walt Ehmer as President are right now running Waffle House.

In 2007, Waffle House re-purchased the original restaurant which was sold by the chain in the early 1970s and was most recently a Chinese restaurant. The company is restoring it using original blueprints for use as a private company museum. The museum will be used primarily for internal corporate events and tours but will occasionally be open to the public.

Waffle & Steak

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. Reportedly, the original Indiana Waffle House chain has started using the name "Sunshine Cafe". However, the d/b/a for "Sunshine Cafe" belongs to "Waffle House Greenwood Inc.", established in 1981. 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. (Many of the Waffle House corporations in Indiana have been dissolved.) "Waffle House Inc." of Norcross, Georgia registered with Indiana in 1974.