Waffle House CEO Joe Rogers III says the restaurant chain is making its “single largest additional investment in our workforce” in its 68-year history by increasing base pay for servers to three dollars an hour
The increases take effect this month and follow a more than year-long campaign led by a union representing service workers in the South. The effort involved strikes and petitions calling for higher wages, safer working conditions and an end to mandatory meal check deductions.
Waffle House base pay, not including tips, will increase to at least $5.25 an hour for all 2,000 company locations by June 2026, with additional increases based on seniority and shifts, Rogers said in a video to employees.
Many restaurants in the US offer what is known as the “own minimum wage”. Under labor law, they can offer as little as $2.13 an hour if that amount, combined with tips, at least matches the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, where it has been since 2009.
Waffle House is not changing its policy that servers keep their own gratuities, as it would be “foolish to go down the path of service charges instead of tips,” said Rogers, who also dismissed the idea of 'pool tips.
Rogers also said Waffle House will look to offset the additional labor costs by raising menu prices, noting that customers at the chain's urban locations would be among those who will be charged more.
The company has not disclosed any actions to respond to other worker concerns, including safety, particularly at locations that are open 24 hours a day and are known to attract disorderly customers.
In April a fight at a Waffle House near the Ohio State University campus led to a shooting killed a manwhile in February an early morning shooting at a Waffle House in Indianapolis killed one person and injured five others.
Waggle House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Privately held Waffle House operates about 2,000 locations, including hundreds in Georgia, where the company is headquartered.
Some states have moved to raise wages for restaurant workers, who are more likely to live in poverty than workers in other fields. In April, for example, the minimum wage for most fast food workers in California rose to $20 an hourthe highest base of the restaurant industry in the United States.
Before California's wage increase, the highest-paid fast-food workers in the US were in Washington state, which has a minimum wage of $16.28 an hour.
