FEMA is the acronym for Federal Emergency Management Agency, their main job being disaster response.
After a hurricane, FEMA moves in and co-ordinates relief to the worst hit areas.
The problem with a hurricane is it crosses several states, each state the size of a European country.
Everyone, everywhere is crying out for help but how do FEMA know which areas have been hardest hit, which areas they need to help first?
The official system they use is called the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, this shows rainfall, windspeed, meteorological data, all the statistics.
But it can’t tell them about actual damage on the ground, human suffering, where relief is most needed.
For that, they don’t need abstract technical information, they need to know what’s really happening to the people.
So for that they use The Waffle House Index.
The name Waffle House Index was coined by Craig Fugate, director of FEMA, in 2012.
Waffle House is a chain of 1,600 blue-collar diners across the south-eastern states of America, the hurricane belt.
Waffle House has built their business without advertising, without false claims about brand-purpose, they’ve built their brand by being open for local working folk 24 hours-a-day, 365 days-a-year, something ordinary people can depend on.
The Waffle House business strategy is to remain open even in the most dire situations, unless and until it’s absolutely impossible.
During hurricanes, Waffle House issues a constantly updated map of its 1,600 locations marked in Green, Yellow, or Red.
Green means it’s open as normal, minimal or no damage.
Yellow means it’s open but without electricity, food supplies are low.
Red means it’s closed, severe damage and flooding.
Craig Fugate said “We look at their map and where we see the Waffle House is closed we know that’s where the worst damage is, that’s where FEMA has to go to work first.”
Waffle House policy and training is to stay open if at all possible.
Where other restaurants close as soon as the electricity goes down, each Waffle House switches to its own generator, so customers can still get a hot meal and recharge their mobile phones.
Even if there’s no electricity at all, the Waffle House staff are trained to switch the menu to just cooking by gas: bacon & eggs, hash-browns, sausages, hot coffee.
For instance, at the Waffle House on Interstate 95 the staff carried on cooking by gas until it got too dark to cook safely, then they stopped but opened again at dawn and there was already a line of cars and trucks waiting outside.
Locals who hadn’t had a hot meal for days knew they could get one at the Waffle House.
Not only does business skyrocket in a situation like that, but you can’t buy the kind of customer loyalty.
All the money other brands spend on meaningless brand-babble advertising, Waffle House spent on a storm centre that was visited by a grateful governor of Georgia and always gets airtime on every TV news programme during hurricane season.
They also spent their money on a fleet of fast-response vehicles to get to any badly hit Waffle House ASAP and get it open again fast, usually within hours.
Waffle House is a lesson in how to run a business based on real people, not on marketing theories.
Waffle House doesn’t run ads about trust, trust is a fact.
Waffle House is all about product, not brand.
But by being all about product they’ve built a great brand that is not just trusted but depended upon by all their customers.
Instead of just the usual advertising waffle.