Blackouts have businesses seeing red

When asked how the recent power outages have affected them, a handful of local business owners had a common response: “Which one?”

After three townwide blackouts in less than a week, Culpeper restaurateurs and food sellers have lost thousands of dollars in spoiled food, not to mention business lost. Safeway alone dumped $63,000 (retail) worth of food after the week’s outages.

“We had to grab every employee we had and get them to pull every frozen food, all the meat, anything cold,” said Safeway assistant manager Jessica Watts. “We have to throw it out. We’re still working on (restocking) it.”

Though Culpeper Food Lion managers could not comment, one mentioned they only lost about $800. He said they brought trucks up from Richmond and stored perishables for the duration of the outages. Watts said Safeway employees did the same, but still lost a lot of what was on the trucks.

Locally owned businesses did not fare much better
Things on East Davis Street seemed to be running smoothly Wednesday afternoon, but stories from Tuesday night shed a different light.

“How many thousands of dollars have I taken a beating for?” asked It’s About Thyme owner John Yarnell. “I don’t want people to know. It even scares me.”

It’s About Thyme was packed during peak dinner and lunch hours for each of the three outages, Yarnell said. He has hand-run credit card machines, but the information in the system was lost and waiters had to rewrite all the checks. Some people even refused to pay.

“No arguments from me,” he said. “My customers are my base. If they don’t think it’s fair, I don’t think it’s fair.”

Because everything in his restaurant and adjoining Thyme Market is run on electricity, including freezers, refrigerators and fire systems, nothing would operate. The hoods over the stovetops are “smart hoots” and shut down automatically if there is a problem, which meant the smoke vents closed and the dining room filled with smoke.
Yarnell and his employees rushed to refrigerate the bulk of his perishables, but still said he lost a “ridiculous amount of money.”

“I was really frustrated,” he said. “(Wednesday was) the first morning in 13 years I didn’t want to come to this building. That’s how frustrated I was, because it’s out of my control.”

Just across East Davis Street, The Frenchman’s Corner suffered substantial financial losses as well.

Known for its gourmet European chocolates, The Frenchman’s Corner lost anywhere between $3,000 and $5,000 in spoiled chocolates and melted ice cream, according to manager Peggy Buskill.

After the power went out June 4, Buskill said, the business lost its entire bulk of chocolates in the two cases at the front of the store, plus all the ice cream.

The fresh butter cream Belgian and French chocolates have to be climate-controlled — no warmer than 69 degrees. She said the heat destroys the butter cream inside and thus destroys the chocolate, forcing them to throw it out.

“This is not a good situation,” she said. “It’s not just the immediate loss, it’s the loss of income as well. You’re scrambling and there’s nothing you can do. What can you do? It’s a costly thing.”

After Wednesday’s losses, the chocolate supplier overnighted new shipments to stock the store for the weekend. Then it happened again.

“We’ve got to pay for all this, pay for the shipping, and you’re telling me this is going to happen again?” she asked. “In less than a week’s time? That is ridiculous.”

Both Saturday and Tuesday, Buskill and others filled bowls with ice inside the chocolate cases, then insulated them with blankets. In the back room, cases of destroyed chocolate sat, ready to be thrown away.

Two doors down at the Frenchman’s Cellar, owner Jeffrey Mitchell managed to save his $2,500 inventory of specialty cheeses, thanks to a good Samaritan. A friend who Mitchell did not want to name let him occupy some space in his 18-wheeler’s refrigeration unit June 4 and again on Saturday.

“Losses in the cheese have been minimal,” he said. “Sacrifice personal has been great. It’s really hard.”

But Tuesday night, Mitchell did not want to push his luck and opted to store his cheeses in coolers with ice packs. When he returned at 1:30 Wednesday morning, he found the ice still solid and the cheese still fine.

“It’s just been frustrating to pack up the entire inventory, move it, bring it back,” he said. “I was pretty fit to be tied.”

Not just food losses
Across town at Culpeper Town Square, the Mountain Run Bowling Alley may not have lost food, but it definitely lost business.

Tuesday night is league night at the new bowling alley; June 4 and Saturday were open bowling. Owner Melissa Anderson said she is still trying to recover losses, especially those from not having credit-card capabilities since Saturday.

“I mean, is this going to happen all summer?” she asked. “I can’t afford for this to happen.”

She estimated they had lost about $4,000 in business over the three days without power.

Up the road at Ciro’s Italian Pizzeria, manager Antonio Borgia said because their kitchen runs on gas, they were able to continue making pizzas for a short time before closing early Tuesday.

“It was kind of complicated because there weren’t lights,” Borgia said. “We had one guy making the food and another guy holding a light. It was kind of hard, but we could still make it.”

The main concern on most business owners’ minds seemed to be, “Will this happen again?” But despite the financial losses, Yarnell attempted to look at the grander scheme.

“You look at the big picture and there are people’s homes that are flooding and floating away,” Yarnell said. “There are real, real problems out there. These are things we’ll deal with.

“But it has cost me a lot of money. But there are other people who have lost everything and I feel very badly about that. For me to complain? Why should I complain?”

Catherine Amos can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 138 or .