When Beryl Hit Houston, Locals Turned to Whataburger

We'll take a burger, small fries, and an update on Hurricane Beryl, please. That's what Whataburger customers in Houston are getting served up via the fast-food chain's app, which is providing what Quartz calls "a unique view into the storm's aftermath"—specifically, where the power is still out in Texas' largest city after the deadly Beryl swept through. CenterPoint Energy, Houston's energy provider, has been contending since Monday with more than 2 million people who've lost power. One local, however, stumbled upon a way to figure out which parts of the city still had electricity, for the purposes of finding food, gas, and other supplies: by tracking whether Whataburger restaurants were open or closed around Houston through the chain's app.

Bryan Norton of Tomball, on the outskirts of the city, tells the Washington Post that he lost power Monday morning and was searching on his phone for places where he and his wife could find something to eat. He decided on Whataburger, but when he looked at the restaurants on his map, he noticed something interesting: "a patchwork of gray and orange W's, where the latter logos marked the open Whataburgers." "I was like, 'Holy cow! Now we can see the scope of the [power outage] issue,'" he says. Norton posted about his find on social media, and it soon went viral—especially since CenterPoint Energy's own power-outage restoration map had gone down in May due to "technical challenges" after another storm.

Some note the similarity between the Whataburger app and the "Waffle House Index," which has even been used by FEMA to gauge how hard-hit areas are after storms based on what Waffle Houses remain open. "Whataburger is that friend by your side in good times and bad," Whataburger CEO Ed Nelson says in a statement, per KHOU. "We're glad the Whataburger app has been helpful to Houston residents." The company adds that its app should only be used for "a general idea of power availability." As for CenterPoint Energy, a rep tells the Post that they hope to have their map replaced by the end of this month, so that residents don't have to rely on fast-food apps for a storm status update. (More Whataburger stories.)