The Wall Street Journal has a terrific ahed today on the Waffle House and how the company goes all out during natural disasters to stay open.
The company, which stays open 24 hours a day 365 days a year, doesn’t like being shut down, even when a tornado or hurricane has ripped through. The Journal reports that in the aftermath of Katrina, which shut down a hundred of its 1,600 restaurants and destroyed seven of them, Waffle House set up an aggressive plan to respond to emergencies. Now it’s mentioned in the same breath as giants like Walmart and Home Depot for its disaster-preparedness plan, which includes these measures:
Senior executives developed a manual for opening after a disaster, bulked up on portable generators, bought a mobile command center and gave employees key fobs with emergency contacts.
This is great detail on the ground in North Carolina last week:
Power went off at the Waffle House just off Interstate 95 in Weldon on Saturday evening as Irene churned through. The restaurant kept serving until it got too dark for the grill cook to see when the food was cooked, then it shut down.
It reopened the next day at dawn. The overhead lights and walk-in freezer weren’t working, but the gas grill was. The cooks boiled water on the grill, then poured it through the coffee machine, over beans ground before the power went out. The district manager, Chris Barnes, handed employees copies of an emergency grill-only menu. The fare included ham-and-egg sandwiches for $3.15 and quarter-pound hamburgers for $2.70. Servers nudged customers to order sausage instead of bacon, because four sausage patties fit on the grill for every two slices of bacon.
And this a great lede:
When a hurricane makes landfall, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency relies on a couple of metrics to assess its destructive power.
First, there is the well-known Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. Then there is what he calls the “Waffle House Index.”
Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.
“If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?” FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate has said. “That’s really bad. That’s where you go to work.”
If I have a hesitation with this piece it’s with its assertion that what Waffle House is doing is part of some marketing strategy. It’s unclear why the paper says marketers are behind it—there’s certainly no sourcing or reporting here that would show that. Might its disaster response is just a somewhat old-fashioned and noncynical way of doing well by doing good? It hardly seems like Waffle House has a marketing team driving many of its decisions.
And I could have done without this clueless-yankee “what is Waffle House?” graph:
Waffle House, a privately held company based in suburban Atlanta, may be best known as a roadside stop for retirees driving south or the place where musician Kid Rock got into a brawl after a 2007 concert.
But it’s a very good story all the same.
Ryan wrote: "If I have a hesitation with this piece it’s with its assertion that what Waffle House is doing is part of some marketing strategy. It’s unclear why the paper says marketers are behind it—there’s certainly no sourcing or reporting here that would show that. Might its disaster response is just a somewhat old-fashioned and noncynical way of doing well by doing good? It hardly seems like Waffle House has a marketing team driving many of its decisions."
But it's both, Ryan. In private enterprise, the marketing incentive and humanitarian incentive necessarily meet — symbiotically, if you will — at some point. Thus, the marketing strategy is almost commonsensical: If we want to help people, we must stay open; besides, we must stay open if we are to help ourselves. If a private firm does not perform, its competitors step in to take its potential customers and fill the humanitarian void. But there is no such profit or cost-cutting incentive for govt bureaus and pseudo-private firms. They are monopoly; they face no competition; they are rewarded for both success (which is rare) and failure (which is the norm); Congress throws more money their way, bails them out, etc.; and they continue failing and acting counter-effectively (inhumanely, wastefully, destructively). The Waffle House example shows exactly why the govt can not outperform the private (voluntary) sector in delivering goods and services adequately, humanely, cost-effectively, and on.
A WSJ reader wrote: "Maybe we should get rid of FEMA and put Waffle House in charge."
One could say that Waffle House already is "in charge," precisely because it has not been "put" in charge by the govt.
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Fri 2 Sep 2011 at 04:58 AM
Another feel-good story about Waffle House can be found here. Doug French reviews a new book, Waffle Street: The Confession & Rehabilitation of a Financier, by James Adams.
It's Waffle House versus Wall Street, and guess who wins!
"Adams was no veteran when given the third-shift opportunity. He had only been on the job at Waffle House for a few weeks. His Chartered Financial Analyst designation and MBA provided scant seasoning for the assignment. The five years as an investment analyst for a couple of life-insurance companies were no help. Neither was his most recent job of providing 'verbal and written commentary on the performance of forty bond portfolios whose strategies covered nearly everything under the sun' for a company he refers to as 'Alpha Managers.' . . .
"Adams learns plenty on the job. In a rare reflective moment, Edward tells his protégé why he went to prison; after telling Jimmy about a robbery and the resulting accidental death, Edward says, 'The main thing I learned in prison was that if you want anything in this world, you got to work for it in the first place. Greed will never take you anywhere good.'
"The owners of Waffle House make their money the way their employees do. Hard work. No financial alchemy from the Wall Street wizards. Just plain old serving the customer what they will trade their dollars for, watching costs, and growing with retained earnings.
"Wall Street layoff announcements are prevalent this summer. Those laid off should know: Waffle House is always hiring."
#2 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Fri 2 Sep 2011 at 05:27 AM
Spectator: Clayton Burns • September 2, 2011 at 11:48 am • Reply
The subtext: NYT: At Columbia, Faith of Some in President Is Shaken By ALAN SCHWARZ Published: September 1, 2011
[June Cross, an associate professor at the university’s Graduate School of Journalism, said in an interview on Wednesday, “I’m not saying race is the issue, but it is the subtext.” She added, “Michele Moody-Adams was advertised as, ‘Here’s our commitment to diversity.’ If you’re not going to stand behind what you say you hired her to do, what does that say about your commitment?”
[...] At the Graduate School of Journalism, Ms. Cross said she was the only black woman with tenure, and one of three black people over all out of the more than 40 faculty members.]
One might wonder why Lee Bollinger shows no apparent interest in English and admissions issues at Columbia as affecting learners of the language, as explored in this blog. Perhaps it is just an “internal” matter.
At least, at the Spectator, anything mildly critical of Columbia’s practices in equity does not get deleted, as may easily happen at the Princeton student paper.
Both the Spectator and CJR should already have had the Columbia English in admissions story and today’s June Cross story. What’s the Latin for “Maintain a dignified lack of interest in the facts”?
#3 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Fri 2 Sep 2011 at 11:53 AM
Doug French writes again about Waffle House, citing the WSJ story and answering the question: "Who Serves During Disaster?"
"Mayor Bloomberg has no market mechanism to punish him or his city government if he overreacts. While private citizens were inconvenienced and local businesses lost revenue, the mayor frequently mugged for cameras during the storm, issuing warnings in English and Spanish. City hall didn't lose a thing and now pats itself on the back for being prepared.
"Two kayakers who were rescued after their boats capsized off Staten Island during the storm were issued summonses by the city. The mayor told reporters that being in the water was 'reckless' and their needed rescue had 'diverted badly-needed N.Y.P.D. resources.' City government was only interested in herding people and stopping commerce prior to and during the storm, not 'protecting and serving.' . . .
"Either way, with no market to compete in, New York City government doesn't worry about developing good will. Waffle House, on the other hand, 'has built a marketing strategy around the goodwill gained from being open when customers are most desperate,' writes Bauerlein.
"Government monopolies have the incentive to provide the least amount of service for the highest cost. So, the government brass suspends services and tells their constituents to go away and come back when it's more convenient. Meanwhile, Waffle House fires up the generators, eager to serve their faithful customers in the worst of conditions."
#4 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 6 Sep 2011 at 04:31 PM
Dan A.,
It's just untrue that NYC's government doesn't worry about developing good will. A mayor wants to be re-elected or leave a good legacy. Bureaucrats want to get job promotions. City councilors want to win votes.
Elections are markets for votes, you know.
#5 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Wed 7 Sep 2011 at 01:22 PM