![]() ![]() The latest: Hurricane Dorian Sunday update: Pensacola, Florida Panhandle is outside of probable path We take over the conference room and bring in some monitors and watch the weather, and which restaurants are having higher volumes, and things like that, so we can make sure our resources are in the right places.” “Our role here (at headquarters) is to feed them with information. That’s where they live anyways, they don’t have an office here in Atlanta,” Warner said. “The way we’re structured is our leadership is in the field (wherever the storm is expected to hit). For instance, our senior VP and executive VP over the Florida markets are in Florida right now. Preparations for the storm typically start days before it’s expected to hit.Īt the Waffle House headquarters in Norcross, Georgia, a team of executives will activate the “Waffle House Storm Center” - a conference room in the building that suddenly turns into a military-level operations room filled with company engineers, restaurant operators, food safety experts, meteorologists and more. If we’re closed, they’re not making money and we feel like we have a responsibility to be there for them.” What is the Waffle House Storm Center? And more importantly, for our associates. We’re here 24/7/365, so our customers are used to us being there, and we want to get open as quickly as possible after a storm. “But the real reason it goes back to is our culture. First responders and the National Guard will reach out to us and we’re very happy to open for them,” Warner said. “We have the reputation we’re going to be open quickly. Which begs the question: How, exactly, is the chain with nearly 2,000 restaurants in 25 states able to stay open during or after storms when most other establishments close down? That was a long recovery to get those restaurants back open and get the associates back in the stores, and we’re seeing a little bit of that with Hurricane Michael in the Panama City Beach area.”Įven with Category 5 hurricanes, those types of closures are an exception rather than the rule. Even if we could get the restaurants back up, there was no place for our associates to live. “Most of the restaurants opened up quickly afterwards, and some shut down entirely. “Katrina was by far our biggest disaster,” Warner said.
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