Ember CLI -- How can I get variables to survive page refreshes?

I'm setting a variable on my application controller and calling it from other controllers.

export default Ember.Controller.extend({
  needs: ['application'],
  foo: Ember.computed.alias('controllers.application.foo'),
});

This works great for keeping information when re-routing, but the only problem is that it does not survive a manual refresh of the page. So how do I make it so that it does? I only found one other question about this here but it does not have an answer.