This Is Why You May See A Price Increase At Your Local Waffle House

Whether you like your Waffle House hashbrowns smothered, scattered, covered, or chunked, you may be paying a little bit more for them in the near future. 

In a video annoucement, Waffle House CEO Joe Rogers III announced that the company would be raising its prices. Exactly how much the cost of a Waffle House sandwich or All-Star Breakfast is going up depends on where you live around the country. Folks in small towns may find things on the menu are a bit cheaper than what folks in the big city will pay.

Rogers said in the video that restaurants in major cities like Dallas and Atlanta have more “room” to raise prices than restaurants in “suburban or rural” areas. “Our menu prices in a rural town are relative to competitors’ menu prices in that rural town. So we may not have as much room to increase prices as we have in a large city.”

The increased revenue is going to a good cause, though: It is helping the company pay its very hard-working employees more money. According to Rogers, Waffle House will be raising its base pay to at least $3 an hour starting in June with employees making the rest of their salary via customers’ tips. Waffle House expects to raise base pay within the next two years to $5.25. While customers may not be thrilled at yet another price increase, Rogers is “excited” about the change and the ability to pay his employees more. “This is the single largest additional investment in our workforce in the entire 68-year history of Waffle House.”

While folks across the South love the Waffle House’s low prices, Rogers notes that the higher menu prices will contribute to better overall service in Waffle Houses, including more cleanliness and bigger portion sizes, which are certainly wins. Plus, anyone who has been to a Waffle House at Valentine's Day, midnight on a Saturday, at a wedding, or in the middle of a severe storm, knows that those Waffle House workers earn their paychecks.