minipost
Waffle House is a mostly Southern restaurant chain offering your basic greasy American breakfast 24 hours a day. Over 2100 locations. Any Southern town with over about 10,000 people has one. I've visited one a few times when we were working with Disney and found at least their orange juice safe, but a lot of people love them. What makes them interesting to me is the Waffle House Index.
Waffle House is deservedly famous for being open no matter what. Power out? .. no problem .. that's the emergency generator. Tornado cut through town? Keep the place open for the disaster crews. There's even a central disaster control center to manage massive events like hurricanes. They've become a legend - so much that FEMA publishes an informal, but often quoted Waffle House Index. Immediately after a disaster they might report something like 3 of 14 Waffle Houses in the impacted area open. A few days later progress might be summed up as 8 out of the 14 Waffle Houses are back online. It's useful a measure of commercial and public resilience just under the level expected for first responders and front line medical people.
Until yesterday all of the Waffle Houses were closed. Now, in states like Georgia, they're allowed to open and some are. COVID-19 is a new game. The nature of the danger is ongoing rather than short-lived. Somehow the Waffle House Index doesn't seem appropriate. I suspect a more interesting index might be the percentage of normal customers coming in for a normal sit-down meal staying the normal amount of time? Sort of a second order Waffle House Index. What is the regional perception of danger and how does that play out in personal risk-reward calculations?
As recently as this week national polls suggest over 80% of all Americans don't believe going to a restaurant worth the risk. Sporting events and concerts are over 90%. How regional are these numbers and how do they change with function, social class, income, risk category, etc. (football in Texas for example) It's an interesting question as the economy attempts to come back given insufficient testing and a dysfunctional berserker executive.
The evolution of this index would be most interesting.
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