Over the past few years, late-night Waffle House brawls have increasingly gone viral on social media, showing intense fighting between patrons and crew members at the beloved breakfast establishment.  Many have speculated what drives the phenomenon, where new videos of these incidents continue circulating across the internet.

Recent footage of a Waffle House fight has spread across X, showing an employee locked in a fistfight with what appears to be an angry customer.  The two, who appeared to both be women, were entangled with each other, grappling and trading punches while stumbling across the kitchen.  It is unclear what caused the fight, but onlookers and other staff eventually broke up the physical altercation.

Other customers in the restaurant either cheered on the fight or continued to eat their food with seeming indifference to the violence in front of them.  Others made sure to record the incident with their phones instead of taking action to prevent someone from getting hurt, a commonly observed trend during chaotic events across society.

There is have been intense debates online as to why Waffle House seems to be the location in which many of these viral fighting incidents occur.  Some blame the pandemic for straining the social fabric of society, polarized politics, or other other things that have impacted societal behavior.  Others point to a simpler answer that alcohol and being open 24/7 are to blame.

One person opined in a Reddit discussion, “With Waffle House it’s pretty obvious it’s an alcohol fueled problem but what’s led to the similar behavior spreading to almost everywhere else? Were people that thrown off bc their normal lives were changed in some ways? Did the increasingly polarizing politics turn people into constant d*cks? Was this a result of people becoming stir crazy or forgetting how to interact with other people? Either something different is causing the same Waffle House instincts to come out, or many more people picked up drink / drug habits during the pandemic or there’s another thing going on that’s causing this. Perhaps some sort of mental exhaustion, I don’t know.”

Watch the fight below:

Another person claimed:

Waffle House is open late, after drunk people are leaving the bars. Drunk people leaving bars without having met someone to go home with may be angry drunks.
Consuming a lot of alcohol increases your triglycerides, stimulating galanin production. This makes you crave high calorie foods, especially with lots of carbs and fat.
Waffle House is a well-known, inexpensive chain with brand recognition. If a one-off Brazilian steakhouse where the menu was $65/plate was open until 3:00 am, you wouldn’t see fights break out.

So Waffle House is the perfect storm of the food that drunks crave, open when the bars close, and cheap enough for trashy, low-class drunk assholes to afford.

Another person claimed, “The violence at Waffle House isn’t just post-pandemic. That’s how Waffle House has always been. If you were to rank late-night restaurants, it’s Denny’s and I-Hop, and then much lower down on the ladder is Waffle House. Denny’s and IHop avoid some of the issues by having high-backed booths that separate customers, and a kitchen in the back. There are still fights at those other places, but not at the same frequency. Waffle House stuffs everybody into too tight of a space and they’re often located in shittier parts of town. So by saving money, Waffle House increases the chances of conflict.”

Note:  The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.