A sign is all that’s left of this Waffle House on the beach in Gulfport, Miss., Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005. Hurricane Katrina passed through the area causing extensive damage to the Gulf Coast last Monday morning.
CREDIT: Associated Press/Phil Coale
Since 2011, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has used a unique metric to measure the severity of a storm: the Waffle House Index.
The breakfast chain popular in the South has long been known for its disaster preparedness plans. Hurricane Harvey hit Texas quickly, but Waffle House had already started planning long before that–meeting with local authorities, educating employees, and making checklists, according to Yahoo Finance.
That’s a protocol any entrepreneur could learn from.
“We’re open up until the city makes us close,” a Texas-based employee told Yahoo. If local outposts are operating normally, the Waffle House Index is green. If they’re open with limited menus, the index is yellow. If they’re closed, the index is red.
Small groups of employees from unaffected Waffle House locations readied themselves to travel to Texas and restore service as early as this past weekend. Even so, three of the chain’s Houston-area Waffle House locations have closed this week, according to Eater.