EXCLUSIVE - Waffle House grill cook cheat sheet
This is a photograph of a Waffle House grill cook's cheat sheet.
The photographs indicate the way in which a cook marks his orders. These secret plate markers allow a Waffle House cook to simultaneously prepare multiple customer orders at once.
Let me give you an example. If I were to order three scrambled eggs, dry wheat toast, and hash browns, the waitress would face the grill and yell out loud - "Mark: Triple scrambled dry wheat plate."
The cook would then quickly take a large dinner plate, turn it sideways, and place a tub of jelly upside down at the six o'clock position.
The six o'clock position indicates scrambled eggs, and the jelly upside down means wheat toast. I am not sure how to mark "dry" for the toast, or how to indicate hash browns versus grits.
This chart explains why I often get a packet of mayonnaise with my grilled chicken plate.
You might also like my photo collection of paper towel dispensers or Americana photo set.
Comments and faves
petercooperuk, SoStark, dalasv, Powellizer, and 235 other people added this photo to their favorites.
Maigh (76 months ago | reply)
Let me know when you find the recipe for the waffle batter.
TheRogue (75 months ago | reply)
Now that's a great discovery! I wish they had Waffle Houses here in California. I miss them.
michaelbrutsch [deleted] (75 months ago | reply)
@TheRogue: At least you've got Chicken And Waffles!
dcecil805 (75 months ago | reply)
Saw this on BoingBoing. Amazing!
Pamela Drouin (75 months ago | reply)
Saw it on BoingBoing as well. What a neat system!!
hi_im_monkey (75 months ago | reply)
putting manhandled packets of condiments on the supposedly clean plate before plating the entree (i use the term entree very loosly here) sounds more than a bit unsanitary to me.
NautArch (75 months ago | reply)
monkey...you're kidding, right? It's Waffle House. You're not going there to get sanitary food.
billolen (75 months ago | reply)
Brilliant, thanks for posting!
tanjatiziana (75 months ago | reply)
insane.
Editz (75 months ago | reply)
It won't be much longer before you have a simple LCD display with an image of what the finished order's supposed to look like. Forget all the jelly packet shorthand stuff.
Compwalla (75 months ago | reply)
Um, Waffle House is a grease pit, not a surgical operatory. The cook's hands are probably the cleanest things in the joint.
edrabbit (75 months ago | reply)
The secrets of Waffle House! I always love sitting and listening to orders get yelled across the kitchen. Why oh why can't they open Waffle Houses in California? I miss them so.
re-blogged
ACLerok (75 months ago | reply)
Wow. That is really something else.
psylux (75 months ago | reply)
Boing boing said something about coming here. What's going on?
diet_coke_ca (75 months ago | reply)
Who works here in this Waffle House, Peaches? Who fold them omelets, who turn them sausages, who clean up the mess, and who just plain work here... just breathin' in the grease fumes?
Somebody who don't work here made them rules. Them rules ain't for us. We the ones who make up them rules. We makin' our own rules, every day. Ain't that right, Homer?
CapnMarrrrk [deleted] (75 months ago | reply)
How cool! I am totally baffled by the pickle placement though. What if the plate somehow gets rotated? Does the layering help just in case?
My mind is blown, as is my bowels if I eat at Awful House.
Say it 3 times quick: Awful Waffle, Awful Waffle, Awful Waffle.
Prehensile Eye (75 months ago | reply)
gotta love codes.
four12 (75 months ago | reply)
Friends don't let friends eat at Waffle House.
nickgraywfu (75 months ago | reply)
For the record, you CAN eat healthy at Waffle House! I have eaten there every morning for over a year and my BFI (Body Fat Index) is under 15%. My standard meal is steamed hashbrowns, a grilled chicken breast, and water with no ice (total $4.39 plus tax).
chrisscott (75 months ago | reply)
I always thought they only hired savants for cooks. So dissapointed now...
Spatch (75 months ago | reply)
Once we suss out the code for dry white toast, we can next work on the code for four fried chickens and a coke.
This is absolutely fascinating. Soda jerks at fountains used to have their own lingo; Waffle House short-order cooks have their own signal system. I love it.
duanemoodydotcom (75 months ago | reply)
coolness!
xinit (75 months ago | reply)
Steamed hashbrowns? I'm cold and afraid...
cinemafia [deleted] (75 months ago | reply)
Nice! I haven't been to a WH in at least 10 years, but as I remember you could find one about every mile or two on any major street in Gerogia. Oh and, this has been Dugg.
phood (75 months ago | reply)
Hey,
I WAS a Waffle House cook in Phoenix decades ago. Back then, you just had to remember what to do and how it looked. If you couldn't do that, you could never handle the rush on a Sunday morning. Are cooks getting dumber? Are people's brains atrophying?
fujiyama17 (75 months ago | reply)
cool!
Alexei Godek (75 months ago | reply)
cool
sedo1800 (75 months ago | reply)
Welcome to the digging
millertime83 (75 months ago | reply)
wow, that's crazy.
timmorgan (75 months ago | reply)
My father worked for a time on the front lines of a robust late 90's economy: he worked in HR for a temp agency. As a part of this, he saw lots of people come through looking for work, and as a part of their application process the company would inquire into a person's previous work history.
One day this guy came in, he was a 17 year veteran as a Waffle House short order cook. He filled out his paperwork, my father reviewed it as he sat there. All was pretty straightforward until he got down to the "Reasons for leaving last employment."
Instead of the stock answers he was used to seeing and expected, he was confronted with one word:
"Jellypacks."
Seems that this particular Waffle House had moved to the Jellypack system shown above, and after 17 years of doing his job day in and day out he couldn't keep up with the new system.
Another casualty to technology, I guess.
flippedcracker (75 months ago | reply)
awesome. i love me some waffle house.
SillySilers (75 months ago | reply)
my husband and my mom LOVE waffle house... i should not have learned this little trick. just the fact that i can see the kitchen while i'm waiting for my order, and them slip sliding across the kitchen on greasy floors - makes me sick.
Now this... makes OCD side of me go nuts - i'll be looking at the cook's hands now for sure - if he scratches his balls, picks his nose, brushes his hair back, slaps a roach... OMG... the possibilities are endless. hahaha
uva_sig (75 months ago | reply)
Sweet find!
durlando (75 months ago | reply)
This is not just happening at Waffle House. When I was a barista at Starbucks about ten years ago, we had a similar way of keeping track of orders (and since this happened to be the second-busiest Starbucks at the time, we needed one). You turned the cup upside down, on its side, with the cup opening facing you, or whatever to indicate cappuccino, decaf, half-caf, etc. It was a neat system but of course has gone by the wayside as turnover gets worse and automation takes over.
absentmindedprof (75 months ago | reply)
timmorgan, that is a great story. i'm glad the guy (seemed to have) had a sense of humor about it.
maltoodle (75 months ago | reply)
Thanks for posting this - my visits to Waffle House will never be the same.
pishee (75 months ago | reply)
interesting!!!
--
http://kottke.org/ (?)
DRAllen (75 months ago | reply)
durlando-I thought you just wrote the order on the side of the cup at Starbucks..why the other system?
InsideThePerimeter (75 months ago | reply)
Of course they communicate using condiments. Have you ever tried understanding their words? It's not easy. :)
a.k.a. Flash (75 months ago | reply)
This makes me hungry.
staramaze (75 months ago | reply)
insanity! Don't they have pens/paper?
afsheen (75 months ago | reply)
For what it's worth, I'm not sure they actually do have a way to indicate dry toast.
It often takes a couple of tries to get it right (with the server eventually having to stand by the toaster and grab the toast him/herself before someone else comes by and automatically covers the toast with butter).
cmill603 (75 months ago | reply)
dry toast is a butter cup on the jelly.the pickles indicate what is on a breakfast sandwich, such as bacon, sausage etc.
jane4hearts (75 months ago | reply)
Now if they'd only clean up their kitchens. I stopped eating there a couple years back because it was always so dirty.
raz0rii (75 months ago | reply)
cmill603 -
You're ALMOST right. Dry toast is marked with a butter cup UNDER the jelly packet.
MelTheFruitFly (75 months ago | reply)
It's cool to see this... and even though I can't believe I'm about to say this, I miss Waffle House. I guess when you grow up eating mostly gross food in a hostile environment surrounded by the dregs of humanity, you learn to love it in a way.
And durlando stole my thunder with the reveal on the old Starbucks way. I worked at one in 1994, and it was amazing how that simple little stacking system allowed me to keep track of 6, 7, 8 orders or more at a time. Of course, back then we didn't have even a quarter of the drinks they have to make now, so I'd imagine that's why that system gave way to writing the order on the cups. And don't get me started on the fact that no one knows how to properly pull a nice shot of espresso these days, since all those lackeys have to do now is press a button.
Um, sorry. My mind wandered. Where was I?
Oh yeah, cool pic. :)
suzanne.1012 (75 months ago | reply)
I love me some waffle house. I am actually toying with the idea of a franchise... we moved to Alexandria, VA recently and I can't believe how much I love the WH!
how is it that the woman cooking seems to be the same person in Shreveport, Williamsburg and Greensboro? are they cloned?
suzanne.1012 (75 months ago | reply)
that Bucks thing is the coolest ever!
ricco_march2001 (74 months ago | reply)
dry white toast
one jelly pack on top of a butter pack on top of a small upside down plate
<master grill op at waffle house :D
ne_atl (74 months ago | reply)
4am falling out of the Bar/club drunk. Whats the most beautiful site in the night time sky???? A well lit Waffle House sign. Chicken Melt, fresh coffee and hash browns.
I love the south!