How Waffle House gauges a hurricane's strength

Restaurant Weekly - 9/1/23

Author

Andy Moore
February 02, 2024

Hello! Let’s get to it…

3 Numbers

$9 million

Amount stolen by three Florida men in semi-loads of frozen beef and pork. This crime ring/future Justified plot line began in June 2021, targeting meat-packing plants in 6 Midwest states.

180

Feet in length for Subway’s new blimp, which will first be deployed at the NFL Kickoff Game in Kansas City on September 7th. Underneath the blimp is a gondola that will be turned into a Subway “restaurant,” feeding up to 6 diners at a time. (Take note: this is the flex everyone should pull when you land a $9.6 billion sale. Blimp Restaurant.)

11.8

Percentage of restaurants that now serve biscuits on their menu — a number that should rise higher with IHOP’s announcement this week that it’s making biscuits available nationwide.

The Waffle House Index

Image via Shutterstock

Hurricane Idalia made landfall Wednesday on Florida's Gulf Coast, bringing what the National Hurricane Center called a "catastrophic" storm surge to the area. It was briefly a Category 4 storm before weakening to a Category 3, and after moving through Florida and bringing flooding to Georgia and the Carolinas, it’s now out to sea.

By midday on Wednesday, as the storm exited Florida and residents began to survey the damage, one important metric let everyone know how badly Florida had been hit: Five Waffle Houses were in the Red Zone.

The Waffle House Index is an unofficial gauge of both the severity of a storm and the magnitude of assistance a community will require after a disaster. The index has three levels:

  • Green: the Waffle House has power and minimal damage

  • Yellow: the location either has no power or generator power, and/or it’s food supplies are limited

  • Red: the location is closed, likely indicating severe damage to the restaurant

The index was coined in 2011 by former FEMA head Craig Fugate, who once gave the all-time quote, “If you get there and the Waffle House is closed? That's really bad.”

So how did Waffle House get that reputation?

The restaurants have a remarkable ability to stay open during extreme weather. Wednesday’s Waffle House Index reported that only 15 of Florida’s 190 Waffle Houses were in the yellow or red categories, meaning around 97% of the state’s stores managed to stay fully open.

You can thank on-site power generators, a comprehensive disaster plan, and corporately-deployed “jump teams” who help reopen stores after disasters. (Exhibit A: this wonderful video of Goldsboro, NC residents enjoying Waffle House during an active hurricane.)

Couple sound risk management with both 24-hour service and a location density in the stormier part of the country, and you’ve got a surprisingly useful tool for both FEMA and unofficial storm watchers.

Name That Chain!

You get three hints to guess this week’s mystery chain:

  • This chain invented the two-way drive-thru speaker system.

  • Julia Child was a fan - she kept a list of store locations in her purse.

  • It took 25 years for the chain to open its first 13 stores. (There are almost 400 now.)

WHAT IS THIS MYSTERY CHAIN? (The answer lies at the bottom of the email.)

Quick Hits

  • Another credit-card increase… The WSJ reported this week that both Mastercard and Visa are preparing fee increases in October and April, tacking on an extra $502 million to merchants’ annual spend with the two credit card companies. Restaurants are “in disbelief,” and the National Restaurant Association seems to be gearing up for a battle — charges in the U.S. are already the highest in the world, and the total amount of fees paid by merchants is up $60 billion over the last decade.

  • Michael Mann, we have your sequel to Heat… After this newsletter covered the increasing number of autonomous sidewalk delivery robots, a reader passed along the news that, by the way, an increasing number of them are also being robbed. Despite many of the smaller robots coming equipped with cameras and alarms, video clips of theft and vandalism widely circulate on social media, and some customers have complained about missing orders. Still, industry leader Serve says its bots can boast a 99.9% completion rate for all deliveries.

  • Panera is testing a 50% smaller menu … Panera confirmed this week that it’s testing a more streamlined menu in a limited number of stores… after it was scooped by its own employees’ Reddit burners and TikTok accounts, where posts about the menu cuts went viral. It remains to be seen what, if any, nationwide cuts will come from the market test, but the changes are pretty broad — nixes of French onion soup, the new chicken sandwiches, and the entire kids’ menu are generating much chatter online.

  • Del Taco goes off-premise… Del Taco joined Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and other national chains in opening its first off-premise-centric unit this week in Albuquerque, NM. The 1,200-square-foot unit features a walk-up window, drive-thru, and pickup lockers for delivery and online orders. Also - no dining room (but that might be stating the obvious).

  • Burger King faces lawsuit… A district judge ruled this week that a class-action lawsuit on whether the Whopper matches its pictorial depiction can move forward. McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Taco Bell are currently facing legal battles over false advertising in food photos.

  • New overtime pay proposal… The Biden administration has proposed an update to the Fair Labor Standards Act which would expand overtime eligibility to salaried employees making less than $55k/year. This change would affect roughly 3.6 million workers and is similar to an Obama-era proposal that was eventually blocked by the courts.

  • DoorDash enters a new AI arena… DoorDash said that it’s developing an AI bot that can answer phone calls made to restaurants. Customers will be able to place orders with the system for either pickup or delivery. (Presumably after yelling at the bot for a bit, they can also be connected directly with a human at the restaurant.)

#Content Recs

See ya next week.

Trivia answer: In-N-Out

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