Thanks for explaining and lending your expertise.

Though, I am, again not a lawyer, but I am 99% sure you can't go use the Waffle House logo to sell anything, let alone waffles. I only say that because no one is using, say, the Coca-Cola brand to sell shoes, and if they did, we all know Coca-Cola would prevent that. That goes for any trademark in the US. So perhaps trademark law is different here?

Also, Waffle House are ubiquitous as a brand in the United States - certainly not as well known as Coca-Cola or Sony, but I have no doubt they'd be able to prove national awareness in any demographic.

In this particular case if you look at the C&D, it is for the trademark usage. It's likely that this person could have simply removed the trademark from the page and it would have been fine.

edit: I think the key in other industries would be proof of brand dilution - that is, if you start using the Nike logo to sell waffles, Nike would send a C&D if not a team of lawyers because you are diluting the trademark. So I guess you're technically right, although functionally, brand dilution is easily provable.

No prob. Just some random bits I found looking around for clues whether there already were any decisions from US courts wrt whether Waffle House is a well-known trademark:

Interestingly enough, Waffle House is mentioned in a 2007 article related to a US trademark law reform as an edge case [1].

This does not seem to be the first time that Waffle House appears to be overreaching: [2]. The balls to pull this off with a straight face, kudos to the colleagues.

An article from INTA relating to dilution [3].

[1] https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1864... page 458, last paragraph and footnote [2] https://www.techdirt.com/2011/08/17/waffle-house-says-rap-so... [3] https://www.inta.org/fact-sheets/trademark-dilution-intended...