Tim Mullins Real Estate

From humble beginnings to southern mainstay. I love to read about local history.

✨NEW EPISODE✨

https://linktr.ee/ArchiveAtlanta

This week, we’re talking about Waffle House. Opened in 1955, in Avondale Estates, we’re covering the two men that started it, the first locations, franchising, expansions, controversies and legal issues, Waffle Records and even the Waffle House Index.

In the early 1950s, Tom Forkner and Joe Rogers were living on the same street in Avondale Estates and they came together with an idea; Rogers went to Forkner and said “You build a restaurant and I’ll show you how to run it.”

The two combined $4,000 in savings and built out a restaurant space at 2719 East College Avenue. They named it Waffle House because waffles were the most profitable menu item. The first help-wanted ad ran in the newspaper on September 1, 1955, asking for counter and grill personnel for a new Waffle House on College Avenue between Decatur and Avondale.

On Labor Day of 1955, the same year that McDonald’s was founded, Waffle House opened for business and by the close of that year, the store had 10 employees and a sales volume of $50,000.