Waffle House closed all its restaurants along a stretch of Florida’s central Atlantic coast Thursday as Hurricane Matthew approached, urging customers "Stay safe Waffle Nation!"

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate, who once headed Florida's emergency management department, has said that how quickly Waffle House restaurants reopen after a weather event is an indication of how the community is faring, FEMA said in a 2011 blog post.

It's been called the "Waffle House Index." Fugate told NPR’s "Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!" in May that it came out of the 2004 hurricane season.

"They are open most of the time. And that was the index. If a Waffle House is closed because there's a disaster, it's bad. We call it red," he said on the program.

Waffle Houses along Interstate 95 between Titusville and Fort Pierce were closed, the company announced.