In a tweet yesterday the breakfast restaurant chain Waffle House announced they would be closing 365 of their restaurant locations, offering a map of which locations would be closing.
While many restaurants, businesses and schools are also being forced to close amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the massive closure of Waffle House locations is concerning for a special reason: it means the Waffle House Index is red.
In 2018, NPR released a podcast about the Waffle House Index, a unique disaster indicator coined by Craig Fugate, former director for the Federal Emergency Management Index. Often, particularly in the southern United States, a disaster is measured by whether or not the local Waffle House locations remain open. If they’re open and unaffected, then the index is at green. If they have a limited menu, it’s yellow. If the Waffle Houses close, it’s a code red.
Earlier this month Waffle House was at a code yellow nationwide — locations were still open but many of them were focusing solely on carryout options, Fox Business reports, but the announcement of massive closures has people concerned.
Since the original announcement, NBC reports Waffle House has closed even more locations, pushing the total closed restaurants up to 418.