This is why companies come on strong like this.

The dude made in good humor, a website and pushed it on social media at a time that attracted a bunch of attention. It included graphics close enough to the trademark to be confusing to visitors, and did something that the company didn’t want done for reasonable reasons.

They incurred cost. People handled phone calls, their counsel billed for the response, the web agency had to modify the website. Waffle House sells greasy diner food, every aspect of dealing with this is zero value to them.

Rather than beat around the bush, they said “stop”. He did, and wrote a funny blog about it. But for every 10 situations like this one, there’s probably 1-2 where the counterparty is a prick and wastes everyone’s time.