Hurricane Katrina
Background and Problem Statement
Hurricane Katrina was the worst storm to hit the United
States mainland in American history. The devastating effects of
the storm on the City of New Orleans, as well as the entire Gulf
coast of Mississippi, were caused by tremendous storm surge,
which resulted in 20–foot waves hitting Biloxi and the
Mississippi Gulf coast (Cater and Chadwick, 2008). Television
sets that were temporarily rigged up at Raising Cane’s Chicken
Fingers on Lee/College Drive in Baton Rouge, which was the only
location in the city with electricity, provided CEO Todd Graves
and his management team with information about what was
happening in New Orleans (Cater and Chadwick, 2008). Grave and
his management team are deeply shaken by what they see. Graves
summarizes the situation by noting that the “‘levees are
breaking. This changes everything'” (Cater and Chadwick, 2008,
p. 121). Graves instructs his team that they need to open
restaurants, calling on crews to come back to work because it
was imperative for the company to serve the “‘community and
customers that need our services…because that is what business
should do'” (Cater and Chadwick, 2008, p. 121).
This paper reports on the manner in which Raising Cane’s
Chicken Fingers responded to the crisis created by Hurricane
Katrina the problem was Graves’ horrified realization that New
Orleans was in their “‘backyard and people are dying'” (Cater
and Chadwick, 2008, p. 121). The problem facing the company
involved the implementation of their Crisis Management Program,
which has been described as the “‘Perfect Safety Box'” (Cater
and Chadwick, 2008, p. 125).
Graves’s vision was to open a restaurant in which the menu
was streamlined and served only one item, chicken fingers, which
are cut from the breast of the chicken. Kathleen Wood, president
and chief operating officer of the company, explains that these
cuts are “‘…actually tenderloins. It’s like the filet mignon
of the chicken'” (Cater and Chadwick, 2008, p. 122). The product
is served “‘fresh, never frozen,'” and the atmosphere of each
restaurant reflects top management’s desire to create a “‘cool
place’ for young adults to work” and where customers are treated
“politely in a part–like atmosphere” (Cater and Chadwick, 2008,
p. 123). The company prospered and by the summer of 2005,
Raising Cane had opened up 28 restaurants located along the
coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as another four
outside of this area.
Analysis of Problem
Business owners and people living in the coastal regions of
the Southeast are always aware of the possibility of hurricanes
hitting and the damage and destruction they cause. Wood was
persuaded to join the company in June of 2005 and a component of
her new position was to implement a crisis management program.
She focused on this task during her second month of employment
at Raising Cane, which was July of 2005. While was a variety of
small, mini programs throughout the company, there was no
comprehensive crisis management system. Wood began to
consolidate and pull the various strands of crisis management
scattered throughout the company into a comprehensive program,
the Perfect Safety Box. Wood and her team had just finished
finalizing their crisis management system prior to Hurricane
Katrina, so, as the hurricane drew near, the company had a
crisis program in place (Cater and Chadwick, 2008). Hurricane
