Waffle House has 1,600 restaurants along Hurricane Alley from the mid-Atlantic to Florida to the Gulf Coast.
After Hurricane Katrina the company lost seven restaurants and 100 more shut down, but those that reopened quickly were swamped with customers.
The company decided to beef up its crisis-management and focused on its ability to open after a disaster using portable generators.
Since then, the company, which spends almost nothing on advertising, has built a marketing strategy around the goodwill gained from being open when customers are most desperate.
They pride themselves on being the one place where locals and first responders can get a hot meal when power is down.
(WATCH the video below, or READ the story in the Wall Street Journal)