/Title
Has anybody ever been there? I find them great.
Information
Waffle House is a restaurant chain with over 1600 locations found in 25 states in the United States. Most of the locations are in the Southern United States, where the chain remains a regional cultural icon. It is headquartered in unincorporated Gwinnett County, Georgia, near Norcross.The first Waffle House opened on Labor Day weekend, 1955 at 2719 East College Avenue in Avondale Estates, Georgia.
That restaurant was conceived and founded by Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner, who both continue to own a majority of the company 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 with the now-defunct Memphis-based Toddle House chain, and was moving to Atlanta. He met Tom Forkner when buying a house from him in Avondale Estates.
Rogers' concept was to marry the speed of fast food with table service and around the clock availability. He told Forkner "...You build a restaurant and I’ll show you how to run it,”’ recalls Tom Forkner.
A Waffle House restaurant in Gadsden, Alabama.
Forkner suggested naming it Waffle House, as waffles were the most profitable item on the 16-item menu. The fragile nature of waffles also made the point that it was a dine-in, not a carry-out, restaurant, but it confused patrons as to meal availability other than breakfast.
Rogers continued to work with Toddle House, and to avoid conflict of interest 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.Shortly after Joe returned full time, Tom followed suit and left Ben S. Forkner Realty.
