Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave,
Speaker 1: and we're just cooking it up here. It's stuff you
Speaker 1: should know.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: We've talked about waffle House here and there quite a
Speaker 3: bit over the years, and I was gonna do a
Speaker 3: full waffle House episode that was in the pipeline.
Speaker 2: Maybe still, but maybe not. After this.
Speaker 1: I feel like we've taken a pretty good chunk out
Speaker 1: of what would have been a waffle House episode. Agreed, Well,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about the waffle House Index, and yes,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of interesting stuff about the waffle House, but
Speaker 1: I would argue that the waffle House Index is possibly
Speaker 1: the most interesting thing about the chain. Of what everyone
Speaker 1: in the South or Southeast knows is twenty four to
Speaker 1: seven restaurants that are legendary for staying open against all odds.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: And a lot of restaurants and chains may claim to
Speaker 3: be open three hundred and sixty five days a year,
Speaker 3: and they, you know, a lot of them are in general,
Speaker 3: but the waffle House in particular prides itself and has
Speaker 3: taken great, great, great efforts to really stay open like
Speaker 3: it's got to be.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 3: And as you'll see with the waffle House index, if
Speaker 3: the a waffle house is closed, that is that is
Speaker 3: very bad news for the area that that places in
Speaker 3: because they stay open at all costs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And they don't just stay open at all costs
Speaker 1: because they couldn't care less about their staff and they're
Speaker 1: just greedy and want to make money. This is actually
Speaker 1: like buy design. There's a corporate many ideology, and they
Speaker 1: work sure that the waffle house should serve as essentially
Speaker 1: a community center during disasters. And during normal times they're
Speaker 1: just waffle houses. But during a natural disaster in particular,
Speaker 1: you you should just stand back and watch them go
Speaker 1: because they have actual plans that the company has developed
Speaker 1: to figure out how to stay open to serve the community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, we're gonna talk about a few of
Speaker 3: them here and there. One of them is they have
Speaker 3: a limited menu and it's not like, oh, what do
Speaker 3: we have on hand? It's like, all right, we're going
Speaker 3: to you know, I don't know what they call it
Speaker 3: on the inside, but let's just say like we're going
Speaker 3: to to plan B or something, and that means we're
Speaker 3: switching to the official limited menu when there are food shortages,
Speaker 3: when the power's out and stuff like that. Most I
Speaker 3: don't think all of them do at this point, but
Speaker 3: most of them, and I'm sure they want to have
Speaker 3: them all on backup generators.
Speaker 2: That's been a thing for a while.
Speaker 3: So if you, you know, if the power's out, you
Speaker 3: can still probably go to a waffle house and not
Speaker 3: only get power, but you know, get a hot meal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whether you're like somebody whose house just got ravaged
Speaker 1: or a first responder helping people whose house just got ravaged.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're just hungry.
Speaker 1: It's a really important thing that you just totally overlook,
Speaker 1: Like if your kitchen is gone and all of the
Speaker 1: other restaurants in town are shut down, having a waffle
Speaker 1: house open is a really really big deal. And they
Speaker 1: have like actual what are called waffle house jump teams
Speaker 1: that can show up parashooters. They do parachute in, uh
Speaker 1: and I hope they have better names for these things
Speaker 1: than play and be. I hope it's more like playing
Speaker 1: Dark Star or playing Sorcerers Sleeve or something like that. Okay,
Speaker 1: better than playing be. But they parachute in, like you said,
Speaker 1: and they will open a waffle house faster than you
Speaker 1: can say waffle house.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 1: Wait, hold on, uh faster than you can say scattered, covered,
Speaker 1: smother and chunks.
Speaker 2: I know I have asked you how you got yours?
Speaker 2: How do you get yours? Yours? Oh you do so chunked?
Speaker 2: Is ham? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I don't eat ham anymore, but I haven't been
Speaker 1: to a waffle house since I stopped eating ham. So yes,
Speaker 1: I always got it with ham, cheese and and sauted onions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I told. I mean, I just get
Speaker 3: mine straight up. I'm the weirdo that gets unadorned hash
Speaker 3: browns at waffle house. But I do get a double
Speaker 3: order because I just two of those. One isn't enough. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I agreed, But I don't go anymore. I think I
Speaker 3: mentioned on an episode last time I went. It was
Speaker 3: actually with Hodgman after he went camping with a group
Speaker 3: a group of dudes. Here on the way out, I
Speaker 3: was like, we're stopping at waffle house, right, and he went, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: We definitely are.
Speaker 1: And you don't go anymore.
Speaker 2: Now, I mean, that was the only time I've been
Speaker 2: in years.
Speaker 1: I see, I got you. I thought you were you
Speaker 1: don't want to replace that memory with another.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, no, no, that was just the year
Speaker 2: and a half ago.
Speaker 3: But I just it's just, you know, I went a
Speaker 3: lot in college, like you know, late night after the bars.
Speaker 3: But you know, you grow up a little bit and
Speaker 3: you realize you can't eat waffle House every week.
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 2: It's a sad realization. Everybody. It's coming your way though,
Speaker 2: if you're young.
Speaker 1: Yep, So I said, we took a break and come
Speaker 1: back and talk more about this wall Playhouse index and
Speaker 1: what it is and where it came from.
Speaker 4: All right, let's do it.
Speaker 3: So you know, we talked about waffle House being set
Speaker 3: up with generators and jump teams and limited menus. They
Speaker 3: also have temporary warehouses where they can store stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: on that limited menu at least. And this all started
Speaker 3: after Hurricane Katrina in two thousand and five. I think
Speaker 3: seven of the restaurants were completely destroyed, very sadly. A
Speaker 3: hundred of them shut down, but they got up and
Speaker 3: running again very very fast, and the company basically decided like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is such a valuable thing. We need to come
Speaker 3: up with that official plan, like a literal book of
Speaker 3: how to open as quickly as possible during an emergency,
Speaker 3: or stay open during an emergency.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Not only did they come up with
Speaker 1: the book, that's when they figured out, Okay, what kind
Speaker 1: of limited menu can we come up with? How can
Speaker 1: we store it? They identified like local temporary food storage
Speaker 1: they could use. That was you know, I'm sure central
Speaker 1: to a number of waffle Houses, not one for each one,
Speaker 1: and we're just basically ready. It's called disaster preparedness. I
Speaker 1: had no idea about this. I really just thought waffle
Speaker 1: House just stayed out a state open just out of
Speaker 1: sheer will until I researched this. But they have a
Speaker 1: disaster preparedness plan, and apparently other companies do in the
Speaker 1: United States too, like Lows and Home Depot will because
Speaker 1: people need lumber and shovels and hammers and stuff because
Speaker 1: there's blue away and they need to rebuild, and probably
Speaker 1: also more like generators and gas cans and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. I don't know why I'm staying on
Speaker 1: this list, but waffle House isn't the only one. But
Speaker 1: they're just part of a handful of companies who've essentially
Speaker 1: made themselves like de facto essential operations for post disaster
Speaker 1: preparedness stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, which leads us finally to the waffle
Speaker 3: House Index, which is a pretty unique thing. It was
Speaker 3: the brainchild of a guy named Craig Fugate who was
Speaker 3: the FEMA administrator back in the early twenty tens, and
Speaker 3: he had that position after the Joplin tornado of twenty
Speaker 3: eleven in May of that year, and he had kind
Speaker 3: of had this idea for a little while because he
Speaker 3: had noticed after various hurricanes at waffle house was one of,
Speaker 3: if not the only thing open, And he started to
Speaker 3: notice this sort of trend like, hey, your community doesn't
Speaker 3: have water.
Speaker 2: You don't have power, yet the waffle house was open.
Speaker 3: And he started looking at maps and realized that, like, hey,
Speaker 3: if you actually look at where the weather hit the
Speaker 3: hardest and the damage was the most severe, you can
Speaker 3: kind of rate that according to whether or not that
Speaker 3: waffle house is either open, closed, or serving a full menu,
Speaker 3: limited menu, and just how they're doing. And he really,
Speaker 3: like that was sort of like the light bulb above
Speaker 3: the head moment when he said this could be a
Speaker 3: real thing. The waffle House Index could really help us out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean it's as simple as like calling
Speaker 1: the local waffle house in Tampa after a hurricane just
Speaker 1: passed through and saying, are you guys still open? And
Speaker 1: if they don't answer the phone, there's trouble in that community.
Speaker 1: And he was saying, like, that's where FEMA should start
Speaker 1: sending its people first, because that's as bad as it gets.
Speaker 1: If the waffle house isn't open and they actually color
Speaker 1: coded it, there's green as the best part of the index.
Speaker 1: It means that your waffle house is totally fine. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's like a cracked window, but everything else is good
Speaker 1: and everyone in the community can come there. Yellow has
Speaker 1: a limited menu and they're probably using a generator. And
Speaker 1: then red is like it's closed. The waffle house is
Speaker 1: toast come here because this is the community that's hardest hit.
Speaker 1: That's how like dedicated waffle house is to staying open
Speaker 1: that if they're closed, FEMA knows that that's where you
Speaker 1: should go first.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you don't get the red index a lot, but
Speaker 3: again if you do, then that's you know, that's the
Speaker 3: really bad sign. If you know they know a hurricane
Speaker 3: or something like that is coming and they like there's
Speaker 3: evacuation orders and stuff like that. You you know, if
Speaker 3: it's mandatory. A waffle house might close, but the very
Speaker 3: first chance they get to open that thing up, they're
Speaker 3: going to open it back up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There's this really great story I read on the
Speaker 1: waffle house blog welled in North Carolina back in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: Hurricane Irene passed through there and the waffle house, the
Speaker 1: local waffle house lost its power, but the gas was
Speaker 1: still going to the grill, and so it's the waffle
Speaker 1: house stayed open and was cooking for people as long
Speaker 1: as it was light enough for them to see what
Speaker 1: they were doing. And then it just became too dark
Speaker 1: to keep going. They closed and then opened at first
Speaker 1: light at dawn.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I loved that story, but I was so ready when
Speaker 3: I was reading it to hear they cooked by candlelight
Speaker 3: through the night.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sorry, sorry, Chuck.
Speaker 2: I didn't say I expected them to.
Speaker 3: I just that would have been even more amazing, but
Speaker 3: maybe also dangerous, so that that might have had something
Speaker 3: to do with it, or maybe they.
Speaker 1: Just didn't have candles. And then the waffle house employee,
Speaker 1: they're the manual afterward, it was like, by candles. Make
Speaker 1: sure you of planting candles. We learned from Hurricane Irene.
Speaker 2: I looked up by the way, I tried to find
Speaker 2: that they have.
Speaker 3: A a mobile emergency What is it.
Speaker 1: Like a it's like an RV, like a command center.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the only thing I could find looked like
Speaker 3: a food truck.
Speaker 1: Oh is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean I tried to find a picture and everything.
Speaker 3: It just kept showing me this food truck, and I
Speaker 3: couldn't When it was called the command center, I was like,
Speaker 3: is it dressed to look like a waffle house? Because
Speaker 3: it looks like a little tiny waffle house, does it?
Speaker 3: And is there like communications inside or are they showing
Speaker 3: up and cooking like I couldn't. I couldn't figure that
Speaker 3: part out.
Speaker 1: If it is a food truck though, there's one hundred
Speaker 1: percent chance that they're serving mpanjadas right, even from the
Speaker 1: waffle house food truck. But they have a great nickname
Speaker 1: for it though, at least.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, what was from Stripes? What would they call it?
Speaker 1: The EM fifty, which is apparently the assault vehicle that
Speaker 1: Bill Murray drives in Stripes? Was the EM fifty. I
Speaker 1: never got into that.
Speaker 2: Movie, like liked it or saw it all the way
Speaker 2: through it?
Speaker 1: Saw it all the way through?
Speaker 2: Oh, Stripes is great.
Speaker 3: I think it's a movie in two parts, so the
Speaker 3: first half is a lot better than when they.
Speaker 2: Go on the mission in the RV.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. Okay, but you.
Speaker 2: Know, not the best movie in the world. But I
Speaker 2: love Harold Ramis.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, of course, I feel like it might have
Speaker 1: just been a couple of years ahead of me. When
Speaker 1: I was younger, I was more a meat for guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that stuff.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't allowed to watch any of that at the time,
Speaker 3: so I had to sneak it a little later.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know how I was allowed to watch
Speaker 1: Meatballs because I was never allowed to watch Porky's or
Speaker 1: just about anything. My mom wouldn't even let me watch
Speaker 1: Sanford and Son. Because she thought Red Fox is a
Speaker 1: dirty old man.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, that's funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it wasn't that funny. When you're a kid
Speaker 1: and you want to watch Sanford and Son, it's not
Speaker 1: funny at all.
Speaker 3: I did learned two things about your mom this week.
Speaker 3: That and that she played the banjo, which just floors
Speaker 3: me how cool that is.
Speaker 1: She loved playing the banjo. I love that, And I
Speaker 1: love the waffle House index and waffle House didn't even
Speaker 1: sponsor this. Everybody. That's just how impressed we are with
Speaker 1: the waffle House Index. I always thought it was just
Speaker 1: some fooling around pop culture thing. Nope, it's a real thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you've never been, if you're ever in the South,
Speaker 3: go check out a waffle house and the coolest, most awesome,
Speaker 3: fun people work there. And you might be able to
Speaker 3: get into a fistfight with Kid Rock.
Speaker 1: You never know, Yeah, there's a pretty good chance you will.
Speaker 1: Short Stuff is out.
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