Drove from Baltimore to Atlanta. If my memory serves correct there were 37 visible from the highway. Moved out of Maryland and have never seen one since outside of a meme.
Not really pedantic, just pointing out you're wrong...
Born and raised in an area with no Waffle House for hundreds of miles. I think I would have to go out of state and drive for several hours before coming close to one. They're not everywhere in the US.
They're open pretty much all the time and don't close at night, so naturally drunks and other rowdy folk congregate there. Prime time for fights to break out over silly minor things, which often turn physical. There's a reason most restaurants shut their dining rooms down by midnight.
The street address (380) is visible in the picture. Google says there are only two Waffle Houses with a street address of 380, and the picture doesn't match the one in Lebanon, Tennessee.
Actually, when the results first came up, the states weren't in the list, just the towns, and for a moment I was delighted and hopeful this was a Waffle House in Lebanon, Kansas, which would've made this post a delicious layered piece of image+commentary!! [The "middle of America" is just outside Lebanon, Kansas.] But alas, the Lebanon Waffle House is in Tennessee, and this image isn't even of that Waffle House, dashing my dreams of delicious and layered meta-imagery ....
The Waffle Hose Index for the uninitiated [Link] was a moderatly usefull (and humerous) idea thought up by the US Federal Emergency Managment Aganecy (FEMA) to determine the accessability of the area after a disaster.
It takes time to get to an area, even longer if the roads are damaged, so one of the first things to do is to try and call someone local. Waffle House happens to be open 24-7, and has an unusually comprehensive emergency preparedness policy. In a lot of cases they can run for days on a limited menu without power and running water. The only reasons they would not pick up the phone is that telecommunications were down (which FEMA would want to know anyway), that the staff cant get to the resturant (which is also usefull to know) or that the resturant is gone and Amaerica is down one of its finest off-hours eating establishments.
As someone who lives in a place you would consider a "rural hole", the nearest Waffle House is over 1000 miles (or about 1600 kilometers for those in Rio Linda) from me. Waffle House is a southern thing not a US wide phenomenon.
I always used to laugh at the scene in Best In Show where the yuppie couple talk about how they met at Starbucks. But they weren't at the same Starbucks, they were at two different Starbucks across the street from each other.
During a trip to the Atlanta area, I saw so many Waffle House locations that I jokingly made a reference to that scene from Best In Show.
Then IT happened. Literally drove past a spot where there were 2 Waffle Houses across the street from each other. It was supposed to be a joke. Only a joke.
The only place I know in Atlanta that has a waffle house across from another is in Avondale estates where the very first waffle house is located. It's a museum now that is hardly ever open and across the street is a newer more modern waffle house. I bet you were over there lol.
I suppose it's possible, but I don't think that's it.
The trip when this happened was 7+ years ago (pre-covid for sure), so I don't recall the specific location, but it wasn't in Atlanta proper. And I don't recall either location looking like a museum or a location where anybody would put a museum, it was a stretch of road/highway with retail space / strip malls on both sides.
Holy fuck that could literally be anywhere. My brain had a spasm trying to decide which city I remember that exact view from, and of course none of those were in Breezewood, Pennsylvania lol.
My local waffle house is very often that empty. Day or night. I actually find it interesting that they can afford to operate with how few customers they have at any given time.
Indiana used to have a different company that was called Waffle House that preceded that kind of Waffle House, so that kind was called Waffle Steak in Indiana until the other business folded. The other Waffle House was closer to a Denny's but kind of scuzzier. There was one in the town I grew up in and we would go there late at night in high school and play Risk because we were party animals.