The status of Waffle House restaurant chains being open during severe weather is being used to rate the severity of storms.
A system dubbed “The Waffle House Index” is “an informal metric named after the restaurant chain to determine the effect of a storm,” according to the Waffle House Index website. The term was first coined by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Craig Fugate, according to the Waffle House website.
“If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?” Fugate said, “That’s really bad. That’s where you go to work.”
The memes are a flying, but the Waffle House Index is a real thing. pic.twitter.com/ClVGndqGHW
— Gina – @regina17.bsky.social (@reginakeenan) August 29, 2023
Fugate came up with the term in 2004 after Hurricane Charley. He was inspired by the breakfast chain’s ability to remain open even in the most severe of weather, according to Fox News.
The color green on the “Waffle House Index” means the restaurant is open and serving a full menu, showing that damage is “limited.” Yellow stands for a “limited menu” and may signal “power from a generator” or “low food supplies,” while red stands for the restaurant being closed, and signals “severe damage” or even “unsafe conditions.”
“We actually have a storm playbook that every restaurant has,” Njeri Boss, vice president of public relations for Waffle House, said. “We revise it each year as needed. And it tells the management team what to do in the event of an emergency.”
Waffle House has roughly 1,600 restaurants throughout the Mid-Atlantic United States, Florida, and a good portion of Southeastern U.S.
Currently, Florida and parts of Georgia and South Carolina are bracing for extreme weather from Hurricane Idalia‘s landfall as it reached a Category 3 storm Tuesday morning.
IJR reached out to Waffle House for a statement but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
