Whataburger app becomes map of unlikely power outages after Houston hurricane

Fast food chain Whataburger’s app has gone viral after Hurricane Beryl knocked out power to about 1.8 million customers in Houston, Texas. Hundreds of thousands of those people are at risk of being without power for days as Houston is expecting a heat wave, with temperatures reaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Frustrated by the lack of an app from local utility CounterPoint Energy, some Houstonians have gotten creative to track power outages, turning to the Whataburger app.

According to Newsweek, Whataburger is a fast food restaurant chain based in San Antonio with 127 locations in the Houston area. On the Whataburger app, users can see a map of Whataburger locations, with an orange logo indicating that a store is open and a gray logo meaning that it is closed.

Since CounterPoint Energy doesn’t have an online outage map, an X user with the screen name BBQBryan found that the Whataburger stores open map could be a useful tool for seeing where there is power.

“The Whataburger app functions as a power outage tracker, which is handy since the power company doesn’t display a map,” BBQBryan wrote in a post that now has more than 22,000 likes and 6.9 million impressions.

“Well, our app has a use we hadn’t thought of!” replied the Whataburger X account. “We hope you and everyone else are doing well!”

This viral moment seems to have boosted Whataburger’s download numbers. In the iOS App Store, Whataburger is currently ranked 16th in the food and drink category. Just three weeks ago, it was ranked 40th.

While Whataburger’s revelation is amusing, the app’s value speaks to the ongoing issues in Texas, where residents feel helpless in the face of extreme weather. In 2021, when Texas was hit by a severe winter storm, millions of residents were left without power in dangerous, frigid weather. To top it all off, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was spotted traveling to a beach resort in Mexico while his state was in the midst of a historically deadly power outage. So when Cruz posted a message Sunday urging Texans to stay safe as the hurricane made landfall, some voters were frustrated by the hypocrisy and responded in kind on X.

It’s an infrastructure failure that a burger app has become a crucial resource for Houstonians looking for more information about power outages. The Whataburger app can give a rough idea of ​​where there’s power, but there could be other reasons why a store is closed — after all, Houston is in the aftermath of a natural disaster.