Business Boomed For SK Restaurants With Power After Irene

Snapped trees and downed wires caused by the high winds of Tropical Storm Irene plunged much of South Kingstown into darkness for days. With thousands of people without power, watching their own food spoil, any restaurant that was open and serving food experienced a boom in business. But for those that did not fare as well, the aftermath has been a nightmare.

Traffic cones block off the parking lot at the usually bustling Matunuck Oyster Bar, which has been closed since losing power on Sunday night. The refrigerators and freezers are running on a small generator, but without power for the rest of the restaurant, they can’t open for business.

Owner Perry Raso has lost a week’s worth of customers already, and is unsure if he will even be able to open for the busy Labor Day weekend. “It depends on when we get electricity,” said Raso. “I really don’t know. [National Grid told us Wednesday] at 6 p.m., and September 5. I don’t think they know either.”

Right across the street, Cap’n Jack’s is open for business. The restaurant is running on a massive 125 kilowatt generator, using about 200 gallons of gas a day, according to manager Jack Piemonte. While the cost to run the generator is much higher than their normal utility bills, “it was worth it that we didn’t have to throw anything out,” said Piemonte.

Cap’n Jack’s lost power Sunday night as well, but the generator turned on automatically, keeping everything fresh. The restaurant was closed Sunday due to the mandatory evacuation, but was able to open on schedule, Monday at 11 a.m.

And while Piemonte said that business has been better than usual since the storm, it was around normal for the upcoming holiday weekend. There has been a slight difference though – “I’ve seen a lot of the same people coming in every day for lunch,” said Piemonte. “They want a hot meal.”

Chen’s Restaurant in Wakefield was fortunate to never lose power at all. Manager Jack Chen said that they were very busy on Sunday and Monday, but that as power was restored to the town, business started to fall off on Wednesday.

Over on Main Street in Wakefield, Pier Pizza had a line out the door on Sunday night. Owner Justin Gallant described the evening as “controlled chaos.”

Justin and his wife, Eva, weren’t sure that the restaurant still had power, so they drove down Sunday afternoon to make sure the refrigerators were working. “We had a tree across our driveway,” said Justin, “so we used our tractor to push the tree out of the way so we could check on the store. We told all of our employees not to venture out because it wasn’t safe.”

As luck would have it, the power was on. They fired up the pizza ovens, originally planning to just make pizzas to give to people working around town, but “the people just kept coming,” said Eva.

Eva was able to post on Facebook that the restaurant was open, and that’s when business took off. “She posted that at like 4:15,” said Justin, “and we got our first call at 4:18. By 5:30 we actually unplugged the phones because we were getting so many phone calls. After that it was purely people walking in.”

At times the wait for a pizza was over an hour long. “We couldn’t even make slices,” said Eva, “and we started running out of dough. We ran out of [dough for] 9 inch [pizzas] and we were afraid we were going to run out of 18 inch.”

Unprepared for the rush, Justin said that “by 8:30, anybody who was in line, we had to tell them, ‘Give us 10 minutes to figure out if we even have enough food in the store.’” Despite the insanity and the wait, “Everybody was wonderful,” said Justin. “There wasn’t a single person that was grouchy.”

After the pandemonium on Sunday, Pier Pizza was able to open Monday as normal. “Business still is steady,” said Justin. “We were fortunate because we never lost power. We did whatever we could do to help out.”