Waffle House 101: 10 Rules To Learn Before You Go

Waffle House is many things. It's a breakfast spot, a lunch joint, and a dinner restaurant. It's looked down on by some, revered by others, and a Southern restaurant that Anthony Bourdain loved. Many people turn to the restaurant for hangover cures or munchies solutions. That certainly makes sense, given the levels of salt and grease present at the 24/7 diner. Don't pigeonhole it, though — Waffle House has healthy items, if you look for them.

One thing that's certain is that Waffle House is an institution. Just about everybody can get excited about a cup of coffee accompanied by a plate of hashbrowns and eggs. The fact that Waffle House never closes means that you may run into some drunks in the wee small hours, sure, but it also means that nurses, truckers, and anyone else who works different shifts than the average 9-5 can get a plate at a place where the prices are reasonable enough for families to enjoy a meal out. Having something for everyone is definitely a way to achieve the status of an institution. Of course, every institution has rules, written and unwritten. Here are some things you'll want to know before you visit a Waffle House.

Trust us on this one: Order the hashbrowns if it's your first time at Waffle House. Remember, though, that one does not simply walk into Waffle House and order hashbrowns. Scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, capped — there's a code for getting your hashbrowns exactly the way you want them, and it's actually half the reason to order hashbrowns. Do you like mushrooms? Ask for "capped." Do you like a melted slice of American cheese? Ask for "covered." All of the language for this side item is printed on the menu, too. You can't claim ignorance about this important quirk of the Waffle House experience. All that said, if you want hashbrowns with no toppings, that's fine. In the words of one Reddit commenter, "This is a frequent order, no one will judge."

This practice of adding toppings to hashbrowns grew out of cooks making special orders for friends and family. Until the 1980s, you could only get hashbrowns "scattered" over the grill and "smothered" in onions. Since potatoes are great vessels for other flavors, though, it was only a matter of time before bored cooks started experimenting with things like ham and jalapeño peppers. Management took notice, and rather than shutting it down, they embraced hashbrown customization. As a fun fact to bring up over breakfast, the customizations are listed in the order that they were officially added.

Solo dining at Waffle House can be fun. There's the whole song and dance between the servers and cooks, plus you're bound to see some interesting clientele. Just make sure not to sit at a booth when you're by yourself.

Waffle House is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No matter where the sun is in the sky, you can grab a patty melt and pecan waffle. One knock-on effect of this is that any time of day has the potential for a rush at Waffle House. There are breakfast, lunch, and dinner rushes, of course. But also, there are rushes at shift changes for people like nurses and factory workers, rushes when bars close, rushes when churches let out. The list goes on and on. Be aware of how much space you're taking up, especially if you're dining alone.

Booths should be saved for parties of two or more. If you're by yourself, cozy up to the counter. Maybe you'll make friends with some employees. Servers are usually happy to chat. Some have even called conversation priceless — although we recommend tipping in cash.

If you've spent any time on the internet, you've probably seen a video of people fighting at Waffle House. A couple of factors come into play here. Mainly, a lot of people think Waffle House tastes better when you are — as some folks so succinctly put it — wasted with friends. The truth is, when a place has a reputation for food that can prevent or cure a hangover? That means you're going to see a lot of drunk people when the bars start to close. Maybe that's why some insist that the problem time occurs when local bars close. As one Reddit commenter mentions, "It's that time slot around 2:00 AM to 3:30ish that can get a little dicey," explaining that some folks, "will still be sobering up, and that can be a little rough." Whenever last call is in your town, it's not a bad idea to be away from the Waffle House for a couple of hours afterwards.

While it's true that Waffle House can get rowdy, it's important to remember that rowdy is not necessarily the norm. Some customers have been shocked to find a calm, clean Waffle House during the day. Employees claim that the restaurant usually has a safe vibe, with some saying they've never seen a fight in a year and a half of working there. So don't be afraid of Waffle House. Just keep your wits about you in the wee small hours of the morning.

When Anthony Bourdain and Chef Sean Brock visited Waffle House, Brock mentioned that it's often the only late-night dining option available in the South. It's important, then, that Waffle House fosters an environment of equality. Not everyone is ready or able to eat dinner between the hours of 5 and 8 p.m. An unpretentious eatery, serving inexpensive plates becomes important to anyone working a late shift, no matter where they are on the socioeconomic ladder. Truckers or politicians, ambulance drivers or lawyers, it doesn't matter. Everyone eats the same food here, and everyone gets treated the same by the staff here.

No one is too high or low for Waffle House. Once you're in the doors, you're simply a customer. It's not a fancy place, you don't have to put on airs, and no one is going to judge you — unless you start getting rowdy. Come in with a respectful attitude? You'll be treated with respect, no matter where you're coming from.

When a TikTok video showing something the user called a Waffle House Sandwich — a bacon Texas cheesesteak melt with waffles where the bread would normally be — went viral, other users started trying to duplicate the order. That's not easy for a server to call. Now, there's a less intrusive, more DIY way to get a version of the Waffle House Sandwich. Per a Reddit post, you start by ordering an All Star Special with bacon and cheesy eggs, add those items to the waffle, top with Tabasco, and fold. The bigger issue is that the humble yellow diner is really not the place for internet hack orders. Places like In-N-Out have great secret menus, sure, but Waffle House? There are no secret items here. Complicated orders slowed things down enough that some Waffle Houses put up signs forbidding customers from ordering anything they saw on TikTok.

It can be fun to scour the internet and social media for restaurant hacks, and you can learn about some tasty foods that way. There's also some risk, like the candy trend that caused severe burns. When ordering some viral sensation at a place like Waffle House, where the menu is small and focused, and the staff uses a call system? The risks include withering looks of disdain from the servers at best, and getting kicked out of the restaurant with no food at worst. To borrow a phrase from TLC, please stick to the bacon and the eggs that you're used to.

How does a server tell the kitchen what customers want to eat? Most restaurants use a computer-based point of sale system, where your order is entered into a computer that shows up on monitors in the kitchen. Some restaurants use dupes, which are either a carbon copy of a server's notepad or a receipt that prints in the kitchen. Waffle House is old school. The diner uses a pull, drop, mark system, which involves servers marking up their notepads a certain way, then hollering the order to the kitchen at certain times.

When you order your food, the server is going to call your order back to the cooks, and it's going to sound different. If you want plain hashbrowns, your server will yell, "Drop one hashbrown scattered, mark one hashbrown scattered" (via Reddit). Even if you read directly from the menu, naming each item precisely, what the server calls is still going to be entirely Waffle House vocabulary. Do not be alarmed by this. The server shorthand is there to keep things moving efficiently. If you're curious about the linguistics of your favorite breakfast spot, there are a few places online where you can find a few explainers.

What's better than some tunes while you eat? Maybe it's time to leave the bar, but you don't want the party to stop. Maybe it's Monday morning and you need a musical pick-me-up. Thrillingly, Waffle House not only has jukeboxes but also its own record company supplying the music, and there's an app you can download on your phone, so you can queue up a few tracks from your seat. Sounds nice, right? Well, only if people don't abuse the jukebox.

Maybe this seems obvious, but don't play the same song over and over again. The employees might pull the plug on the box, leaving the whole restaurant tuneless, sitting in sullen silence for the rest of the shift. On the next shift change, the jukebox might get plugged back in, but that comes with its own extra punishment. Unplugging the jukebox and then plugging it back in only restarts the song over, meaning the next shift has to sit through whatever cursed and repetitive playlist has been queued. Misusing the jukebox is one of the main things Waffle House employees wish customers would stop doing. Is punishing two shifts' worth of hardworking staff really what you want to do with your time?

An important virtue at Waffle House is patience. The servers at Waffle House deal with a lot, and they manage to maintain hearts of gold through it all — but they also have plenty of horror stories about what one Reddit commenter describes as "those customers who complain about the silliest of things." At Waffle House, as long as your food was cooked, that's all that matters.

One good thing to remember is that Waffle House offers cheap food in many places suffering from systemic economic woes. If you're enjoying some sausage and grits at the counter, chances are that you and the people on the other side of the counter are on the same side of the class struggle. Keep in mind that life is hard, mistakes happen, and everyone is going through something that you can't necessarily see.

Alternatively, do you really want to risk incurring the wrath of a Waffle House cook? These are short-order cooks who work without dupe tickets. That alone means they have to handle a lot. It's hard to think clearly when you're in a hot environment like that, and these people are able to labor through a shift while juggling a whole restaurant's worth of orders in their heads. They aren't scared of you, nor should they be. It's safest to be nice. 

It's a well-known fact, by now, that Waffle House will stay open through inclement weather — right up until they're forced to lock the doors and board the windows. Since many of the diner's locations are in hurricane and tornado country, Waffle House's open or closed status matters. Even FEMA uses whether or not a Waffle House is closed as one of its metrics for determining if an area should be evacuated. It's affectionately called the Waffle House Index, and it's worth taking seriously, especially if you're potentially in a natural disaster zone. If you can't get your All-Star Special at the counter? Leave town.

In the words of YouTuber Matt Mitchell, "Waffle Houses only shut down for one of the three Hs: Hurricanes, health inspectors, and hell freezing over." We assume COVID-19 lockdowns fall under the latter category. Part of Waffle House's reasoning for staying open is to feed and assist emergency workers and people who either couldn't evacuate or have been displaced by a disaster. This is a badge of honor for Waffle House, and something worth celebrating. There's also a lesson here, that if Waffle House workers are staying away from a place, then so should you.

Being a Southern culinary institution, a certain degree of good manners is expected. One of the most important manners to mind is not getting in the way of a server and more tips. Maybe that's a blunt way of putting it, but those angels refilling your coffee mug and bringing you eggs while keeping a friendly conversation going also have bills to pay. No matter how charming you are, charm doesn't keep the lights on.

We're not saying that you can't enjoy a leisurely coffee and waffle if the restaurant is slow. Lounging at the counter (or a booth, if you're with friends) can be a pleasant experience. The issue arises if new customers show up and have to wait because you wanted a fourth cup of coffee. Remember that Waffle House gets busy at odd times of the day. You might be finishing your last bite of pecan waffle at three in the afternoon while the kitchen seems quiet, but then you see a whole soccer team get off a bus, wanting tables. In cases like these, don't dawdle over your plate. Pay your check, tip generously, and make room for someone else to eat.