Ever been to a Waffle House on a really busy weekend morning?

I was in a packed Waffle House in Ohio once while traveling, and I was amazed at how many orders they could handle. The cooks were twelve, thirteen orders deep, but still seemed to prepare each plate based only on memory. How could they remember all of that?

The guy sitting next to me was a regular, and explained how the system works.

A waitress takes the order on paper. She then hands the written order it to a “shouter.” The “shouter” screams out the order to a coder, who arranges small bits of food and condiments on the plate in a way that tells the line cooks how to prepare the meal.

Is there a strawberry jelly on the plate at 12 o’clock? Ham omelet. Ham cube, shred of cheese, and piece of mushroom at nine o’clock? The customer wants hash browns–cubed, capped, and smothered. And upside down packet of mustard? The guy wants a ham steak.

The entire menu works like this. The guy said he’s asked the employees about it during down time. It takes about six weeks to memorize it all.

This photo at Flickr shows just a small section of the Waffle House code.

Ain’t capitalism grand?

One other thing I’ve learned in my tour of Waffle Houses: There’s an entire genre of Waffle House-inspired music.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 7:51 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.