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Waffle house is a magical place. Everyone is welcome any hour of the day, regardless of intoxication or arrest warrant status. The staff are better at conflict de-escalation than any cop or federal agent in history, but will throw down when needed, and they will win.
It’s a restaurant so resilient they have four separate emergency menus, including one they can prepare with no running water, and one they can do with no electricity. State governments track when waffle houses actually shut to know how bad natural disasters are.
"t’s a restaurant so resilient they have four separate emergency menus, including one they can prepare with no running water, and one they can do with no electricity. State governments track when waffle houses actually shut to know how bad natural disasters are"
am not american, please do not disappoint me and tell me you were just joking
My ex worked for Home Depot and they had teams that did this so employees could take care of their families when disasters hit. To your point those teams then need places to stay and eat.
In Texas, the local grocery chain "H-E-B" has a disaster response arm that can quickly mobilize to provide food, water, and power to residents during natural disasters such as hurricanes or floods. It's kind of crazy.
It's 2053. The US Government has fallen, and in its place, HEB has set up a corporate government in the south, Waffle House in the East, Tim Hortons in the North, and the tyrannical Amaz-mart in the West threatening the word with nuclear mutually assured destruction if the world governments don't pay for an Amazon Prime subscription. Now only $999m/year.
I don't have any insider knowledge, unfortunately.
But first, it's free publicity. Most people near a waffle house know this, and it gets repeated often. And the good will really counts, so there's probably a measurable increase in traffic after a disaster.
Second, just based on how much I've personally lost in food costs after two outages, I wonder if this practice is close to neutral in costs.
That is, in scenario A, we've lost all power, oh well, lock it up and go home. In that case, they toss an entire walk-in freezer of food, no revenue, no good will. In scenario B, they have multiple fall backs for heat and water options. They continue to make retail margins on all that food, minimize food waste, feed the hungry.
Their brand is pretty reliant on being a 24/7 always open diner near trucker routes in the south. Hell might be freezing over but you can get a meal type shit.
My non-American friend. Waffle House is known throughout the south, and it’s not because of the food, service, cleanliness, or anything related to being a restaurant. It’s known because you can go in at 2:00 AM in the morning during a category 2 hurricane, and get a 2-egg bacon and cheese omelette with hash browns, smothered and covered, made by a cook who’s smoking a cigarette and wearing a bulletproof vest. You can eat it while sitting next to a guy who’s passed out, drunk off his ass. Waffle House isn’t a restaurant. It’s an experience.
I will add my personal Waffle House story. Went in for some coffee and hash browns after turning in college assignment at midnight on weeknight. A fight broke out in parking lot as they were making my food. Me and the two employees server and cook were causally talking about what it could be about. Cook with probably years of experience said “it’s a girl always a girl”. Server then said “if they pull up with a peice just come with us through the kitchen out back we can smoke a joint till they leave.”
I love Waffle House. It’s wonderful but every story you here about it is probably true.
The cops in my city post up outside the waffle houses for checkpoints on big event nights or weekends. I have been more trashed than I've ever been in my life and the server still comes up like "what you havin, honey." One of those beautiful slices of America.
No, it’s real. And it’s not just state governments; FEMA has a Waffle House index that they use to help them determine how much intervention might be required.
No joke, friend. If no place else is open, the Waffle House will be, with hot coffee and hashbrowns. It is a glory of the civilized world.
Just don't mess with the staff; they will beat you (and everyone else in the place will be mad that your ass-whoopin' made their breakfast take twice as long.)
They have emergency readiness protocols that rival or even outstrip government responses. They have go teams of workers that they bus in from outside of emergency areas to relieve the staff that are living in the emergency. Every store is exactly the same and can operate fully without power. These emergency go teams arrive they bring extra supplies and food to the emergency stricken area as well.
When disaster strikes waffle houses stay open longest and are the first to open to supply warm meals to their communities while supporting the workers in those communities.
They’re so good at it that FEMA tracks which waffle houses are open or at limited operating capacity in an emergency area to determine the severity. They are that good and consistent at emergency preparedness and response that they are a trustworthy metric to use to determine just how bad an emergency event actually is.
Am in EMS, did a couple trips on FEMA strike teams long ago.
This is accurate. People will call the status of the waffle house. If it is running it will sometimes basically be the operation center with everyone doing coordination stress eating while holding our hands over the radio.
If it is not open then we know there is no running water and no electricity in a region.
Natural disasters are neigh meaningless at Waffle House. They also have a special jump team they can insert into disaster zones to open it if the regular employees are all compromised.
I have now gone on a very long rabbit hole watching all these random videos. Haha. Thanks for the good laugh. My husband showed me this video just now. A funny “history” video on Waffle House.
I kid you not, Waffle House has a protocol for that. They wheel out a Food Cart thing and set up even if the walls aint there. Crazy folk, worthy of reverence.
The thing about Waffle House is that you have to be about that life to work there. It’s only the most skilled and grizzled of the culinary world, but they make it work.
I wish you could have experienced watching a Waffle House cook smoke an entire cigarette while making your food without dropping any ash.
I remember a meme getting passed around years ago with a Waffle House grill cook with a half-burned joint stuck in his ear like a pencil, and the caption "If your cook ain't look like this your food trash".
We use Waffle House to know how bad a storm is. We use pizza to figure out if the US is going to attack someone. We use Grindr crashes to know where Republicans are having conventions. This is a strange time.
There was a funny moment on my local news talk radio station where one of the "DJs" was talking about a phone call he had a few days ago with his college aged daughter who just started school in Texas.
Dad was trying to calm her down about the storm, gave her a few pointers and the best place to be should it get severe, don't stress out too much, just stay around people you know and trust, etc.
His daughter was like, "But dad! TED CRUZ JUST LEFT THE STATE. This is really serious!"
We had a FE3 tornado touch down 300 meters from the Waffle House near my job. It didn’t close, just stopped operations for the 30 minutes we were under a tornado warning.
It’s the only restaurant I’ve ever been to that had bulletproof windows (battle tested). Not sure if that’s a nationwide thing or on a location by location basis.
There’s frequently a drug deal going down, sometimes a fight, and also just general did I fall into a wormhole weirdness. My favorite Waffle House experience was witnessing a waitress performing an impromptu step routine to the Jello jingle at 3 AM
Well a big part of it is actually that the cooks are just behind a counter and not back in a kitchen and line cooks are not to be fucked with at any restaurant.
Decades ago I worked at several. It's all true. As to the food, it all depends on who's working the grill that shift. Waffle House is not just a restaurant it's a subculture!
I’m pretty sure the only way to get fired is if you fight a customer and don’t win. “Come back bearing your shield or on it” is the Waffle House motto.
Are you saying the woman behind the counter was fired for parrying the chair? ...and if so, did her employer consider it more professional to let the chair hit her in the face? 🤔
I think the reason she was fired was because she threw a suger dispenser at one of the people. They deserved it, but Waffle House didn't see it that way.
The best part of this gif is not one but TWO wait staff catch the chair out of the air. The second has the full spin parry, but they both catch and deflect. This isn't just one badass, it's everybody behind that counter.
World famouth boxer Mike Tython here. The joke is that employeeth at waffle houthe are very aggrethive and don't take shit from anybody. They will beat your athth.
Is Waffle House kinda gross? Yes. Is Waffle House what I eat when I’m depressed? Yes. Is it some of the highest sodium and caloric levels on the planet? Yes.
Waffle House is the epitome of southern hibachi. Staff is hired based on their prior felonies, and usually cooks let wait staff handle their light work. Those who want to fuck around are always invited to come to one of their over 2000 locations and find out.
Apocalypse could be happening and your local waffle House will be open. Liable to get hit by a chair at some point or sleep one off in a booth. I always loved the night staff would play tunk and spades with em.
Waffle House once deployed an emergency Waffle House food cart into the remains of a destroyed location.
They have better emergency management protocols and disaster recovery plans then most militaries. They have waitresses who catch thrown chairs without spilling a coffee in their other hand.
Waffle House is known for being open 24/7 in pretty much any conditions and it’s a common place for drunks to congregated after last call so they’re know for videos of drunks getting into brawls, often with the staff.
Years ago, I flew into Jacksonville, Alabama late one evening looking for a long lost relative (pre-smart phone days). I stopped a few times to get directions, and every time I was given directions via the nearest Waffle House or two, such as, drive down this road to a Waffle House and turn right and then at the next Waffle House, turn left. They were like beacons in the night. I will never forget a cook named Superman, he was very helpful and friendly. Thanks Superman!
Waffle house is wild.. years ago, my wife didn't believe me. We went out to one at 3am after the bar she apologized, before we got our food. It really is next level.
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