New history posts every Monday.
A restaurant with a friendly greeting, table service, inexpensive and delicious food is a lot to offer and a place that I enjoy dining. Waffle House offers all of these. It is the perfect place to stop on a road trip and if you are driving from Atlanta in any direction you will probably find a Waffle House. Of course, there are also many locations in Atlanta and the surrounding areas.
I haven’t thought much about the history of Waffle House until recently, but the first one opened in Avondale, DeKalb County, Georgia on Labor Day weekend of 1955. The founders of the iconic restaurant were Tom Forkner and Joe Rogers, Sr.
Waffle House history is included in DeKalb History Center’s exhibit to commemorate 200 years for DeKalb County. There was also a Waffle House menu in the 1997 time capsule opened at the celebration on August 25, 2022. The bicentennial exhibit is open Monday through Friday 10 am to 4 pm and Saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm in the historic courthouse at 101 East Court Square in Decatur, Georgia.
A Waffle House menu sits among just a few of the items removed from a 1997 DeKalb County time capsule, opened August 25, 2022 at the DeKalb HIstory Center’s Birthday Bash.
Help wanted ads in the 1955 Atlanta Constitution read, “Counter and grill personel for new Waffle House on College Avenue between Decatur and Avondale. Apply in person.” Today this is the location of the Waffle House museum at 2719 College Avenue, Decatur, Georgie 30030. A website for the museum shows that they occasionally have an open house or a group tour can be arranged.
Forkner and Rogers wanted to open a 24 hour sit down restaurant “focused on people on both side of the counter.” There is a brief history and several photos on the Our Story page of their website. There is a quote from Joe Rogers, Sr, “ We aren’t in the food business, we are in the people business.”
They didn’t originally plan for more restaurants, but the history shared by DHC says they opened a second restaurant in 1957 in the Candler-Glenwood shopping center. In 1959, a third restaurant opened at 1244 Clairmont Road. Rather than free-standing restaurants, these early locations were in small shopping centers.
The restaurant design that is still used and we recognize as a Waffle House showed up with the sixth location on Moreland Avenue in East Atlanta. This Waffle House is now home to Delia’s Chicken Sausage Stand. The Waffle House restaurant design was created by Paul Shulte.
An August 18, 2019 Atlanta Constitution article stated there were 1900 Waffle House restaurants in the U. S. at that time. In March of 2020 as the pandemic was beginning, Georgia Public Broadcasting news reported that they chain was closing 365 restaurants with 1627 locations still open. I know they have had recent issues with keeping each restaurant staffed, as some restaurants have only offered pickup or were temporarily closed.
If you need more Waffle House trivia, there are tons of facts on their Beyond the Menu page. There is also nutritional information, which I do not plan to spend any time reading, because if you are going to Waffle House it is for delicious comfort food with friends and family in a friendly environment.