Following Hurricane Beryl’s landfall, thousands of Texans found themselves unexpectedly relying on a popular burger chain for updates on which parts of Houston had lost power. Instead of looking to their local energy company, residents turned to Whataburger, as its app features a geomap that shows which locations are open and have power, and which restaurants are closed due to lack of electricity.
An X user highlighted the unintentional public service provided by the fast-food chain, tweeting: “The Whataburger app works as a power outage tracker, handy since the electric company doesn’t show a map. Still nearly 1.9 million power outages.” Unfortunately, the Houston Chronicle reported that CenterPoint, the local energy company, has not had their tracker map online since May due to “technical difficulties” caused by a previous storm.
Whataburger’s President and CEO Ed Nelson told USA TODAY that they were glad their app was helpful for Houston residents but cautioned users to call the locations directly before going there, as the map is just meant to provide a “general idea of power availability.
While social media users praised Whataburger for its unexpected usefulness during the storm, they expressed frustration with CenterPoint. One former energy company employee even tweeted: “As a former CenterPoint comms employee that struggled with the bureaucracy there when communicating about outages: oh my god.
