Walt Ehmer, chairman and chief executive of Waffle House, felt at home in one of the company’s trademark restaurants, calling it “his happy place,” his family said.
“Walt represented everything that is good in this world,” the obituary said. “He had an infectious smile and an authentic love of people. He never took himself too seriously and was always focused on lifting up others before himself.”
Ehmer died Sunday after a battle with pancreatic cancer, his family wrote in an obituary published earlier this week. He was 58.
The company said Sunday that Ehmer would be “greatly missed.”
Ehmer was born in New Jersey, coming to metro Atlanta as a child, according to the family. He graduated from Dunwoody High School in 1984 and then attended Georgia Tech.
His first job after graduating from Tech was as a sales engineer for Allen-Bradley Co. in Milwaukee, coming to work at Waffle House in 1992. He began as a senior buyer in the purchasing department before being promoted to director of purchasing a few years later.
He was named co-president and chief operating officer in 2006, CEO six years later and company chairman in 2022, yet continued to visit the front lines of the business.
“Walt spent more time in the restaurants than in the office working alongside the associates washing dishes, greeting people, cooking bacon and much more,” the family obituary said.
Still, he kept a low public profile when Waffle House was in the news.
With nearly 2,000 restaurants that are virtually always open, the chain became the government’s unofficial measure of a disaster’s severity — the so-called Waffle House Index. If the local Waffle House is closed, that is not a good sign.
That 24-hour-a-day availability, often the only place to go after clubs and bars shut down, has also sometimes meant a not-quite sober, not always agreeable clientele, which has led to occasional violence.
While the chain is not unionized, some union activists and employees have also mounted efforts to pressure Waffle House to pay better and provide more late-night security.
According to the Newnan Times-Herald, Ehmer laid out both his own career history and the company’s philosophy during a 2016 talk at the Newnan-Coweta Chamber of Commerce.
In his talk, Ehmer referenced the unique position of Waffle House.
“When you’re open 24 hours a day, all kinds of people show up and all kinds of things happen,” he said, according to the Times-Herald. “Everybody has a late-night Waffle House story.”
Ehmer credited the company’s long and storied history and its place in the region’s culture to the way the customers and employees quickly transformed from strangers to acquaintances to friends.
“We’re in the people business,” he said, according to the Times-Herald. “We really pour into our people. We don’t have any big secrets. I always tell people, it’s just bacon and eggs.”
Ehmer was a member of numerous boards including the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Foundation, the Atlanta Police Foundation, Aaron’s and the Metro Atlanta Chamber.
He was also a member of various Georgia Tech-related organizations.
He was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer on May 26, 2023, his birthday, the family said. He went through a number of treatments, including chemotherapy and whole brain radiation.
The family asked that, in lieu of flowers, mourners consider making donations in Ehmer’s name to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, The Giving Kitchen, the Georgia Tech Walter G. Ehmer Scholarship Endowment or Saint Jude the Apostle Catholic Church.
A funeral mass will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 17, at Saint Jude the Apostle Catholic Church in Atlanta at 7171 Glenridge Dr., the family said. A reception will follow at Saint Jude in the Ministry Building.
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