When the lights went out south of the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad tracks just before 8 p.m. on Aug. 2, Chew Chew Cafe owner Scott Zimmer was presiding over a packed dining room. Swirling, powerful winds tossed tables and chairs in the outdoor dining area in all directions. And, inside, kitchen and wait staff were scrambling, trying to serve the 60 or so people seated in the downtown Riverside restaurant.
The staff and diners knew it was going to a a long, dark night when a nearby electric transformer near the restaurant blew.
“We knew this was going to be a big problem,” Zimmer said. “Outside the restaurant is a transformer, and we saw an explosion on the line that lit up the sky. It was like a Fourth of July show.”
Those fireworks began a period of 26 hours in which Chew Chew Cafe and other businesses located just south of the railroad tracks in downtown Riverside sat idle, waiting for power to be restored.
At Chew Chew Cafe, the staff cleaned up as best they could without opening refrigerators or freezers. Calls to ComEd produced increasingly doubtful predictions for reestablishing power in the area.
“Originally we were told 1 a.m., then 4 a.m., then 11 a.m.,” Zimmer said. “From a food spoilage point of view, we have a few tricks using ice and CO2 tanks to keep things cool.”
But when power was finally restored to the building around 10 p.m. on Aug. 3, the restaurant had lost plenty of perishable food. Zimmer estimated the loss in the thousands of dollars. That loss didn’t count the loss of business and the cost of paying staff who came into work although unsure whether the restaurant would open.
“All our sales projections for August are out the window,” Zimmer said.
Plus there was the “loss of karma” factor for the restaurant, as Zimmer called it. With the power out, the restaurant’s phones were also dead. They couldn’t even tell customers about the situation.
Even after power was restored, staffers had to wait until about 1 a.m. on Aug. 4 before they were certain compressors and coolers were all working right.
The restaurant attempted to open for lunch that morning, but another-shorter-power outage foiled that plan. Finally by dinnertime on Aug. 4, Chew Chew Cafe was back to business as usual.
Just next door, Grumpy’s Cafe suffered the same kind of fate. Owner David Moreau said that the store lost 30 tubs of ice cream, valued at close to $1,000, in addition to other perishables. Unsure when the power outage would be solved, Moreau also couldn’t order any replacement ice cream, either.
Moreau said he stayed overnight at the cafe, since he had no idea when the power would come back on. He wanted to make sure that when it did, no power surges would damage his compressors.
“I had to camp out,” Moreau said. “The floor is very hard over there.”
After suffering a second power outage, as Chew Chew did, on the morning of Aug. 4, Moreau was still unsure about placing ice cream orders. It wasn’t until Saturday, Aug. 5 that things were back to normal at Grumpy’s. Both Grumpy’s and Chew Chew Cafe suffered a third power outage last Thursday, Aug. 10 for more than two hours between roughly 8:30 and 10:45 a.m.
“I was kind of on pins and needles all the time,” Moreau said. “It’s hard to run a business when you’re not sure you’re going to have power everyday.”
Things were not nearly as bad farther east along the railroad tracks. At the Riverside Restaurant, the staff was just about to close for the night when the Aug. 2 storm blew in. But, according to Mary Stanga, power was restored there roughly three hours later and the restaurant never lost business because of the outage.
“We never closed for an extended period,” Stanga said. “We were very fortunate. For us, it was a minor event.”
In Brookfield, businesses were also hampered by power outages scattered throughout that village. Tischler Finer Foods, 9118 Broadway Ave., lost partial power when the storm hit, but it could have been worse, said owner Dennis Tischler.
“We lost our ice cream freezer, but that was it,” he said. “Everything else was in the back coolers. We had full power by 4 p.m. [on Aug. 3].”
Tischler estimated the loss as in the hundreds of dollars, but “minimal.”
Meanwhile just a block away, the Broadway Pancake House, at 9215 Broadway Ave., didn’t miss a beat.
“We had no outages; we were fine,” said manager Cindie Jessie. “It was really weird with outages in little sections all over the place.”
Farther south on Grand Boulevard, the storm exacerbated a power problem that had been plaguing Trattoria Gemelli at 3755 Grand Blvd.
While the restaurant never lost full power, the business wasn’t receiving enough voltage to run all of its systems. As a result the restaurant was closed Wednesday night when the storm hit and remained closed much of Thursday. It wasn’t until dinner on Friday that the restaurant was back on its normal schedule, despite a lingering voltage problem.
“We’re still working with ComEd,” said restaurant owner Sal Sciortino.