Here's How Much Bacon Waffle House Has Served Up Since Opening

The Southern restaurant chain Waffle House has been serving up breakfast staples like its signature waffles and famous hash browns (that come with their own lingo) for more than 70 years, 24 hours a day. And tucked in between these two dishes, you'll often find a couple of strips of bacon. While the company sells loads of hash browns and waffles, it does a pretty brisk bacon business as well — really brisk. According to Waffle House, it sells 85 million bacon strips a year, amounting to more than a billion and a half sold since its opening. Perhaps it's no surprise that Waffle House sells so much of this deliciously salty, smoky, and umami-packed meat product. Bacon has been scientifically proven to taste good with everything.

It's a big number, but when you start tallying up the years and the more than 2,000 locations, those numbers really start to jump. Since Labor Day 1955 when friends and neighbors Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner opened up the first Waffle House in Avondale Estates, Georgia, the company has sold 1,541,191,295 slices of bacon (till the time of writing). And while the company has sold more eggs, waffles, and hash browns, that's still an eye-popping number. And when you get into comparisons, it just gets wilder. 

Waffle House can be quirky. Whether we're talking about its music label called Waffle Records that produces novelty songs that you can listen to on the chain's jukeboxes, or its unwritten dining rule of solo diners eating at the counter rather than a booth. Then there's the odd-ball facts the company has collected on its sales of bacon and other products. Again, according to Waffle House, the company sells the equivalent of 25,000 miles of bacon a year, enough to wrap around the equator. Those are some astronomical numbers.

Speaking of astronomical, we did some math and determined that based on Waffle House's figures, if indeed that number is equal to 25,000 miles worth of bacon, then it would only require a decade's worth of bacon sales — the equivalent of 250,000 miles — to reach the moon, which, according to NASA, is 238,855 miles away. Now start multiplying that number by how long the chain has been around and it's enough to make your head spin. This is heady stuff and may require a bit more contemplation over a waffle, scattered, covered, and smothered hash browns, and a few bacon strips.