Short Stuff: Waffle House Index

The 24/7 short order restaurant Waffle House is known for staying open during natural disasters, so much so that federal agencies gauge where to start helping in areas where they’re closed. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave and we're just cooking it up. Here at Stuff You Should Know.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  That's right. We've talked about Waffle House here and there quite a bit over the years and I was gonna do a full Waffle House episode. That was in the pipeline. Maybe still, but maybe not after this.

• 1:01Josh Clark?

  I feel like we've taken a pretty good chunk out of what would have been a Waffle House episode.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 1:06Josh Clark?

  Well, because we're talking about the Waffle House index and yes, there's plenty of interesting stuff about the Waffle House, but I would argue that the Waffle House index is possibly the most interesting thing about the chain of what everyone in the South or Southeast knows is 24/7 restaurants that are legendary for staying open against all odds.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  That's right. And a lot of restaurants and chains may claim to be open 365 days a year and they, you know, a lot of them are in general, but the Waffle House in particular prides itself and has taken great, great, great efforts to really stay open. Like it's gotta be a, and as you'll see with the Waffle House index, if a Waffle House is closed, that is, that is very bad news for the area that that place is in because they stay open at all costs.

• 1:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And they don't just stay open at all costs because they couldn't care less about their staff and they're just greedy and want to make money. This is actually like by design. There's a corporate.

• 2:11Josh Clark?

  Ideology? And it works, sure. That Waffle House should serve as essentially a community center during disasters. And during normal times, they're just Waffle Houses. But during a natural disaster in particular, you you should just stand back and watch them go because they have actual plans that the company has developed to figure out how to stay open to serve the community.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. We're going to talk about a few of them here and there. One of them is they have a limited menu. And it's not like, oh, what do we have on hand? It's like, all right, we're going to, you know, I don't know what they call it on the inside, but let's just say like, we're going to to Plan B or something. And that means we're switching to the official limited menu. When there are food shortages, when the power's out and stuff like that. Most, I don't think all of them do at this point, but most of them, and I'm sure they want to have them all on backup generators. That's been a thing for a while. So if you, you know, if the power's out, you can still probably go to a Waffle House and not only get power, but, you know, get a hot meal.

• 3:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, whether you're like somebody whose house just got ravaged or a first responder helping people whose house just got ravaged.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, or just hungry.

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  It's a really important thing that you just totally overlook. Like if your kitchen is gone and all of the other restaurants in town are shut down, having a Waffle House open is a really, really big deal. And they have like actual, what are called Waffle House jump teams that can show up.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Parachuteers.

• 3:52Josh Clark?

  They do parachute in. And I hope they have better names for these things than Plan B. I hope it's more like Plan Dark Star or Plan Sorcerer's Sleeve or something like that.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:05Josh Clark?

  Better than Plan B. But they parachute in, like you said, and they will open a Waffle House faster than you can say Waffle House.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 4:15Josh Clark?

  Wait, hold on. Faster than you can say scattered, covered, smothered and chunked.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  I know I've asked you how you got yours. How do you get yours?

• 4:24Josh Clark?

  What I just did.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Oh, you do? So chunked is ham, right?

• 4:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I don't eat ham anymore, but I haven't been to a Waffle House since I stopped eating ham. So yes, I always got it with ham, cheese and sauteed onions.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I told, I mean, I just get mine straight up. I'm the weirdo that gets unadorned hash browns at Waffle House. But I do get a double order because I just, two of those, one isn't enough.

• 4:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, agreed.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  But I don't go anymore. I think I mentioned on an episode, last time I went, it was actually with Hodgman. After he went camping with a group of dudes here on the way out. I was like, we're stopping at Waffle House, right? And he went, oh, yeah.

• 5:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  We definitely are.

• 5:04Josh Clark?

  And you don't go anymore?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  No, I mean, that was the only time I've been in years.

• 5:09Josh Clark?

  I see. I got you. I thought you were saying like you don't want to replace that memory with another.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That was just a year and a half ago. But I just, it's just not, you know, I went a lot in college, like, you know, late night after the bars. But, you know, you grow up a little bit and you realize you can't eat Waffle House every week.

• 5:26Josh Clark?

  It's true.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  It's a sad realization, everybody. It's coming your way, though, if you're young.

• 5:30Josh Clark?

  Yep. So I say we take a break and come back and talk more about this Waffle House index and what it is and where it came from.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  All right, let's do it.

• 6:03Speaker 02

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• 6:54Speaker 02

  So, you know, we talked about Waffle House being set up with generators and jump teams and limited menus. They also have temporary warehouses where they can store stuff, you know, on that limited menu at least. And this all started after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I think seven of the restaurants were completely destroyed, very sadly. A hundred of them shut down, but they got up and running again very, very fast. And the company basically decided like, hey, this is such a valuable thing. We need to come up with that official plan, like a literal book of how to open as quickly as possible during an emergency or stay open during an emergency.

• 7:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. Not only did they come up with the book, that's when they figured out, okay, what kind of limited menu can we come up with? How can we store it? They identified like local temporary food storage they could use that was, you know, I'm sure central to a number of Waffle Houses, not one for each one. And we're just basically ready. It's called disaster preparedness. I had no idea about this. I really just thought Waffle House just stayed, stayed open just out of sheer will until I researched this. But they have a disaster preparedness plan. And apparently other companies do in the United States too, like Lowe's and Home Depot will, because people need lumber and shovels and hammers

• 8:18Josh Clark?

  and stuff because there's blew away and they need to rebuild. And probably also more like generators and, and gas cans and so on and so forth. I don't know why I'm staying on this list, but Waffle House isn't the only one, but they're just part of a handful of companies who've essentially made themselves like de facto Essential operations for post-disaster preparedness stuff.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure, which leads us finally to the Waffle House Index, which is a pretty unique thing. It was the brainchild of a guy named Craig Fugate, who was the FEMA administrator back in the early 2010s. And he had that position after the Joplin tornado of 2011 in May of that year. And he had kind of had this idea for a little while because he had noticed after, you know, various hurricanes that Waffle House was one of, if not the only thing, open. And he started to notice this sort of trend, like, hey, your community doesn't have water, you don't have power, yet the Waffle House was open. And he started looking at maps and realized that like, hey, if you actually look at where

• 9:28Speaker 02

  the weather hit it the hardest and the damage was the most severe, you can kind of rate that according to whether or not that Waffle House is either open, closed, or serving a full menu, limited menu, and just how they're doing. And he really like, that was sort of like the light bulb above the head moment. When he said, this could be a real thing. The Waffle House Index could really help us out.

• 9:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I mean, it's as simple as like calling the local Waffle House in Tampa after a hurricane just passed through and saying, are you guys still open? And if they don't answer the phone, there's trouble in that community. And he was saying like, that's where FEMA should start sending its people first, because that's as bad as it gets if the Waffle House isn't open. And they actually color coded it. There's green is the best part of the index. It means that your Waffle House is totally fine. Maybe there's like a cracked window, but everything else is good and everyone in the community can come there. Yellow has a limited menu and they're probably using a generator. And then red is like, it's closed. The Waffle House is toast.

• 10:36Josh Clark?

  Come here because this is the community that's hardest hit. That's how like dedicated Waffle House is to staying open. That if they're closed, FEMA knows that that's where you should go first.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. You don't get the red index a lot. But again, if you do, then that's, you know, that's the really bad sign. If, you know, they know a hurricane or something like that is coming. And they, like, there's evacuation orders and stuff like that. You, you know, if it's mandatory, a Waffle House might close. But the very first chance they get to open that thing up, they're gonna open it back up.

• 11:15Josh Clark?

  There, yeah, there's this really great story I read on the Waffle House blog.

• 11:21Josh Clark?

  Well, in North Carolina, back in 2011, Hurricane Irene passed through there. And the Waffle House, the local Waffle House, lost its power. But the gas was still going to the grill. And so it's, the Waffle House stayed open and was cooking for people as long as it was light enough for them to see what they were doing. And then it just became too dark to keep going. They closed and then opened at first light in, at dawn.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that story, but I was so ready when I was reading it to hear they cooked by candlelight through the night.

• 11:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Sorry, sorry, Chuck.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  I didn't say I expected them to. I just, that would have been even more amazing. But maybe also dangerous, so that, that might have had something to do with it.

• 12:03Josh Clark?

  Or maybe they just didn't have candles and then the Waffle House employee, or the manual afterward was like, buy candles, make sure you have plenty of candles. We learned from Hurricane Irene.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  I looked up, by the way, I tried to find that they have a

• 12:19Speaker 02

  a mobile emergency, what is it, like a?

• 12:22Josh Clark?

  It's like an RV, like a, a command center.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the only thing I could find looked like a food truck.

• 12:30Josh Clark?

  Oh, is that right?

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I tried to find a picture and everything, it just kept showing me this food truck. And I couldn't, when it was called a command center, I was like, is it dressed to look like a Waffle House? Because it looks like a little tiny Waffle House.

• 12:43Josh Clark?

  Oh, does it?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  And is there, like, communications inside? Or are they showing up and cooking? Like, I couldn't, I couldn't figure that part out.

• 12:50Josh Clark?

  If it is a food truck, though, there's 100% chance that they're serving empanadas.

• 12:56Josh Clark?

  Even, even from the Waffle House food truck. But they have a great nickname for it, though, at least.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it was from Stripes. What'd they call it?

• 13:04Josh Clark?

  EM, the EM 50, which is apparently the assault vehicle that Bill Murray drives in Stripes was the EM 50. I never got into that movie.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Like liked it or saw it all the way through?

• 13:15Josh Clark?

  Saw it all the way through.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Oh, Stripes is great, I think. It's a movie in two parts, so the first half is a lot better than when they go on the mission in the RV.

• 13:27Josh Clark?

  Hmm, gotcha. Okay.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  But, you know, not the best movie in the world, but I love Harold Ramis.

• 13:34Josh Clark?

  Well, yeah, of course. I feel like it might have just been a couple of years ahead of me when I was younger. I was more a meatballs guy.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that stuff, I wouldn't allow to watch any of that at the time, so I had to sneak it a little later.

• 13:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I don't know how I was allowed to watch meatballs because I was never allowed to watch Porky's or just about anything. My mom wouldn't even let me watch Sanford and Son because she thought Red Fox is a dirty old man.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. That's funny.

• 14:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, it wasn't funny when you're a kid and you want to watch Sanford and Son. It's not funny at all.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  I learned two things about your mom this week, that and that she played the banjo, which just floors me how cool that is.

• 14:12Josh Clark?

  She loved playing the banjo.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 14:15Josh Clark?

  And I love the Waffle House Index. And Waffle House didn't even sponsor this, everybody. That's just how impressed we are with the Waffle House Index. I always thought it was just some fooling around pop culture thing. Nope, it's a real thing.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you've never been, if you're ever in the South, go check out a Waffle House. The coolest, most awesome, fun people work there, and you might be able to get into a fistfight with Kid Rock. You never know.

• 14:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's a pretty good chance you will. Short stuff is out.