The Extensive Ordering Code Waffle House Servers Use At Work

That Waffle House has a certain appeal is not up for discussion. Celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain dubbed the chain better than fine dining after his maiden voyage to WaHo. While more bougie feeding troughs may dabble in hipster spins on old-school breakfast dishes you rarely see today or try to ply you with green smoothies, Waffle House exists as a timeless shrine to simple, unfussy American diner fare. You can get waffles, hash browns, eggs, and biscuits 24/7, God willin' and the creek don't rise.

What you might not know is that, once you give your order to your server, the cooks in the kitchen "mark" your plate with a complicated system known as "Pull-Drop-Mark." A more extensive explanation can be seen in a training video on YouTube, but basically, the kitchen uses a panoply of common condiments and food items to "mark" your plate. The orientation and position of these stand for different quantities, degrees of doneness, or add-ons. 

A jelly pouch aligned in the six o'clock position, for instance, means two scrambled eggs. Moving around the plate, you have over-easy, over-medium, and over-hard. A napkin means the customer wants grits in a bowl. A mayonnaise packet turned silver-side up means that the guest prefers their eggs scrambled light, while face-up means scrambled hard. Cheese slices on the plate mean cheese in the omelet or smothered hash browns. As seen on social media, Waffle House has been known to change or improve the code periodically. Line cooks are responsible for keeping up with the whole system, akin to learning a second language.

As judged by how many cups of coffee Waffle House has served since opening, it's clear that the restaurant has no small degree of success with its unique method of assigning orders. Why not just use paper tickets, the same way other restaurants of every echelon do? "There really isn't a better system than what we do," Njeri Boss, director of public relations at Waffle House, told Nexstar. "It's fast. It's quite easy to learn." Less officially, a Redditor offered up the explanation that, since Waffle Houses are famous for staying open during natural disasters, the universal marking system ensures continuity of service even if there's no power at the restaurant.

Judging by the comments on a now-viral TikTok discussing the ordering system, however, many folks don't believe in its ease and logic. "Coming from a line cook of 10yrs this is the stupidest and most inconvenient thing I've ever seen," one commenter spat. "[T]hey gotta decipher the DaVinci code just to get a plate out," another joked.

Next time you go to Waffle House, assuming you are sober and alert (not a given at this particular establishment), take a gander in the kitchen when the plates are being marked. Waffle House has an open kitchen, after all, and it makes no secret of the marking system. You will likely develop a newfound respect for the quick-moving, hash-slinging cooks working the line, and you might even pick up a code or two.