Bryan-College Station residents have been pleading and campaigning for almost a decade for Waffle House to bring a location to Aggieland, but Waffle House officials have smothered the latest movement to bring the southern staple restaurant chain to town, for now at least.
The latest push to bring a Waffle House to Aggieland was inspired by an Instagram post from Barstool Texas A&M. The A&M-related, Barstool-affiliated page posted a screenshot on July 19 of a direct message to the official Waffle House account asking “any chance y’all could have a location in College Station.” Waffle House’s official page commented on the post and said if it got to 250,000 likes, the company would mention the post to its real estate and construction team. It took five days for the post to surpass 250,000 likes.
However, the social media push did not lead to Waffle House announcing a restaurant would be coming soon to Aggieland.
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“Please know that your and the College Station community’s desire to have a Waffle House close by has been heard. You are not being ignored,” Njeri Boss, Waffle House’s vice president of public relations, said in a statement. “It’s not that we don’t want to be there, but instead that there are multiple, complicated and logistical barriers that first must be overcome before we can move from the consideration phase to any planning phase. However, we will continue to monitor the situation with the hope that one day, sooner rather than later, we might be able to make it happen.
“Until then, we ask for the community’s continued patience as we work on potential opportunities to possibly make inroads closer to the College Station community than we are now. We greatly appreciate your and the community’s love of and loyalty to our brand. And, if and when we’re able to make a College Station location a reality, we will be sure to share that news with the community in a timely manner.”
College Station Mayor Karl Mooney posted Tuesday on Facebook that he had received a letter from Anita Dunio, Waffle House’s real estate administrator and logo board manager. The response Mooney received from Waffle House this week is the same statement provided by Boss to The Eagle. Mooney told The Eagle he sent a letter to Waffle House officials and received a response the next day. Mooney said he had written to a Waffle House official several years ago, but never received a response.
“For years now we’ve had folks who have had an interest in having a Waffle House in College Station,” Mooney told The Eagle. “I’ve since had another correspondence with her and asked her to let me know as soon as Waffle House is fully considering College Station or if there was something more that I could do to help them move in that direction.”
Attracting businesses and restaurants to town is incumbent upon anyone that’s in public office, Mooney said. He noted how Gringo’s, which opened July 19, owned its property for nine years and almost abandoned building a College Station restaurant before going through with its original plans. Mooney said he’s pitched College Station’s growth and steady economy to Waffle House officials as reasons to invest in an Aggieland location.
“That’s one of the things that I’ve tried to impress on the folks at Waffle House,” Mooney said. “Making sure they understood that we’re likely to have in the neighborhood of 68,000 students on hand this year. Not to mention that Highway 6 is the only north-south route between Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth between Interstates 35 and 45.”
This isn’t the first online movement from Bryan-College Station residents pushing to bring Waffle House to Aggieland, either.
The hashtag #WafflesForAgs has been used by people to support Waffle House bringing a restaurant to the Bryan-College Station area. The movement was started online by staff writers at Good Bull Hunting, an A&M-affiliated SB Nation website. In 2013, Aggieland Outfitters made T-shirts with #WafflesForAgs on the front and the A&M logo with a waffle pattern on the back. Waffle House’s Twitter account posted a fake graphic on April Fool’s Day in 2014 that a restaurant would be coming to town in 2015.
A private Facebook group called “College Station Needs A Waffle House” was founded in January 2014 and has 984 members. The page notes that College Station is the only one of 14 college towns in the Southeastern Conference without a Waffle House.
Waffle House brought a food truck to the A&M campus in September 2019 after College Station won a Twitter poll on which city should receive a visit from the chain. Hundreds of people came to the Clayton W. Williams Jr. Alumni Center to get free waffles and hash browns, as well as free Waffle House apparel.
Pat Warner, Waffle House’s former director of public relations and external affairs, told The Battalion during the restaurant’s visit to College Station that “We will be there someday. Unfortunately, I do not know what day that will be. There are no plans right now. I do see us having some restaurants in College Station eventually.”
Until then, B-CS residents are left venturing out of town to dine at Waffle House. Currently, the closest Waffle House locations to B-CS are almost 70 miles away in Conroe and Cypress.
“I’m sure there are some folks that have visited Waffle House and there’s probably some who have not, but just think it would be pretty cool to have one here and such,” Mooney said. “There’s one in many of the other SEC school communities and that would be another notch in our belt, so to speak, just to have that here in College Station.”