While Arizona is officially known as the Grand Canyon State, I know it as the “Gateway to Waffle House Heaven”. If you’ve read my “About Me” section, then you already know I love the diner chain Waffle House, and Arizona is the Western terminus of the Waffle House empire. Providing great service and delicious food, all at ridiculously low prices, Waffle House is an American institution. Headquartered in Georgia and ubiquitous throughout the South, I like to picture Waffle House playing host to some of the more important events in Southern history. I was recently playing the trivia game Wits & Wagers with friends, when a question tangential to Waffle House came up. “When was the first smiley face emoji used in a text message?” Easy. November 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman to President Abraham Lincoln, “Atlanta destroyed 😊”. Sent from the last Waffle House standing in Atlanta, spared for its strategic value to the Union Army. While the first Waffle House didn’t officially open until 1955, you can’t convince me it didn’t happen.
For anyone uninitiated with the Waffle House experience, you have something special to look forward to. The fast pace, waiters yelling out instructions to cooks in the signature Waffle House lingo, indecipherable to most. The exteriors are bare boned and unassuming, not exactly inspiring confidence in the culinary expertise inside. But if you get passed the shabby exterior and make it through the front door, you are in for a treat. At this point you may be doubting my culinary recommendations, so I’ll turn to an independent 3rd party, the late Anthony Bourdain. “It is indeed marvelous– an irony-free zone where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts; where everybody regardless of race, creed, color or degree of inebriation is welcomed.” An eloquent recommendation if I’ve ever heard one.
The food is delicious, the service excellent, and the prices seemingly impervious to the current inflation. My initial infatuation with Waffle House was driven by the food, but as I accrued more time at the diner, something else piqued my interest. All indications are Waffle House is an incredibly well run business. The operation is incredibly efficient, and when you talk to the employees, the vast majority seem to have worked there forever. Certainly unusual in the restaurant business where turnover tends to be incredibly high. Recently I spoke with a Waffle House manager, who tipped me off to the employee stock option and purchase program, which best I can tell is open to all employees. The company is privately owned, so financial information is hard to come by. But according to Waffle House, the stock has generated positive returns every year for the past 60 years. Does this fully explain the long tenure of Waffle House employees? I don’t know but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
The company is so well run, that there’s even a “Waffle House Index”. The term was coined by Craig Fugate in 2011, then a FEMA Administrator, after a tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri. Known for being open 24-7, and extremely well prepared for disaster scenarios, if the local Waffle House is closed, the damage must be pretty bad. FEMA now regularly uses the unofficial index, to judge the severity of natural disasters. More recently the index was utilized as a tool for monitoring the Covid-19 pandemic. “If you get there and the Waffle House is closed? That’s really bad…”.
There’s probably a few people out there who don’t like Waffle House, but I’ve yet to meet them. I had a few holdouts in my own family, dubious of my praise, but all eventually came around when they gave it a shot. For those who haven’t tried it, if you ever get the chance, give Waffle House a try. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Heck yea! Bacon & Sausage Hashbrown bowl, smothered, covered, peppered and “countryfied” 🙂 Get ya some!
I was slow to warm to Waffle House but you have now won me over…
That’s good to hear, let’s go!
I am one of those Waffle House detractors. I’ve been to the Waffle House two times. The first time I ended up with food poisoning. The second time was when Kathy and I arrived in Nashville and the Waffle House was the only place we could find that was open. We sat at the counter at first, but seeing the filth around the cooking area inspired us to move to a booth (we were the only patrons in the place). After a few minutes I said to Kathy (who is deathly afraid of spiders), “I don’t want to scare you, but you may want to move slowly out of the booth because there is a huge black spider next to you. She jumped out of the booth screaming, we moved to another booth, and I moved on from going to the Waffle House. I’ll pay a little more and go to Cracker Barrel any day.
😂😂😂 Poor Kathy. Most of them aren’t that disgusting. You either love it or hate it. Not to many people in the middle. 😂