On September 5, 1955, friends Joe Rogers and Tom Forkner opened a diner in this Decatur building. The chain restaurant they founded, Waffle House, is now spread across the South, famously never closing their doors save for act-of-God weather events.
But the very first Waffle House did close its doors for a time, serving as a series of other businesses before the company bought it back and opened a private museum in the building in 2008. From the outside, it looks like a Waffle House, often tricking passersby to come in search of hash browns. But the museum doesn’t serve any food. Instead, the interior is a faithful recreation of the original 1955 restaurant, along with several decades of Waffle House memorabilia.
