{"id":105775,"date":"2025-12-23T03:06:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/105775\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T03:06:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:06:13","slug":"restaurants-mourn-lost-sales-spoiled-food-in-devastating-pge-outage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/105775\/","title":{"rendered":"Restaurants mourn lost sales, spoiled food in devastating PG&E outage"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Jeannie Kim, owner of SAMS American Eatery, what was a one-hour inconvenience turned into a one-day challenge and then morphed into a one-weekend nightmare that has now become an extended, financially devastating crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More than two days after a fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation<\/a> caused widespread outages across San Francisco, her Market Street restaurant is still without power.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The utility company has said that service will likely be restored by Tuesday morning, but after days of missed deadlines, Kim\u2019s not holding her breath. Whenever her electricity comes back online, she estimates it will take at least a full day to clean out spoiled food, cool fridges and freezers, order new inventory, and prep for service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are just losing so much,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s such a huge impact. This was supposed to be our biggest season of the year, so this is the worst timing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The financial hit \u2014\u00a0encompassing the wasted food and lost sales \u2014\u00a0will total tens of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

While Kim\u2019s Mid-Market neighborhood has suffered among the most persistent outages (opens in new tab)<\/a>, that story has played out in bars and restaurants across the city, from fine-dining hotspots to fast-service pizzerias.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat Saturday is the crux of the holiday season, and we were set to have a monster night,\u201d said Evan Rich, who along with his wife, Sarah, owns Rich Table, RT Rotisseries, and RT Bistro.<\/a> \u201cWe expected tons of people, had all the staff in place, got everything ready. And then the outage ruined everything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the Bistro was able to rescue a 4 p.m. buy-out on Saturday with cold appetizers, an improvised selection of passed hor-dourves, plenty of booze, and cozy candlelight, the team decided to close completely once it became clear that power wouldn\u2019t return around 6 p.m., like originally announced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rich\u2019s businesses lost sales and inventory, while staff members missed out on what was supposed to be an evening of generous holiday tipping. Diners, meanwhile, had to scramble to find other plans, sometimes as out-of-towners or with picky family members in tow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t dwell on it, but the most frustrating part was that it was totally out of our hands and control,\u201d Rich said. \u201cWe were at the whim of the power company that we\u2019re forced to use.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mayor Daniel Lurie said during a press conference on Monday that he told PG&E executives that \u201ctens and tens of millions of dollars is probably an undercount\u201d for the economic impact of the extended blackout.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a huge financial hit to our city, and as we are recovering, it is one that we will take note of, and we will be looking for help from them,\u201d he added, while encouraging every small business owner and resident who lost food or sales to file a claim.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong said he stopped by BBQ King on Irving St. in the Sunset on Sunday, where the owner told him the outage ruined all the ducks hanging for Cantonese barbecue, forcing them into the trash.<\/p>\n

\"MultipleThe owner of the BBQ King restaurant has thrown away all of the ducks hanging to make Cantonese barbecue. | Source: Alan Wong<\/p>\n

Wong has called for a hearing to investigate the cause of the outage and is advocating for the affected small businesses to get compensation. Restaurants already have razor-thin margins, making additional losses \u2014\u00a0especially around the holidays \u2014\u00a0particularly brutal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tony Lee, owner of Sun Maxim\u2019s dim sum restaurant on Irving, said the blackout cost him thousands of dollars a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to throw out dim sum, meat, and fresh seafood \u2014 a huge loss,\u201d Lee told The Standard in Cantonese.<\/p>\n

The timing made it worse. The outage hit during Dongzhi, or the winter solstice holiday, one of the busiest periods of the year. Lee said he\u2019s begun filing paperwork to seek compensation from PG&E.<\/p>\n

Chef James Yeun Leong Parry of the acclaimed new Chinese restaurant Happy Crane<\/a> said he and his team felt a profound \u201csense of helplessness\u201d as they called would-be customers on Saturday to cancel reservations. \u201cWe\u2019re a new restaurant that\u2019s still trying to make money. To close on Saturday night during the busiest season? It\u2019s such a challenge.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not optimistic about fully recouping his losses from PG&E. In addition to spoiled cod, shellfish, and oysters and missed sales from booked tables, the team suffered from lost walk-in revenue and reputational damage. \u201cThey won\u2019t make it easy for us, I\u2019m sure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"AHappy Crane\u2019s Chef James Yeun Leong Parry felt a profound \u201csense of helplesness\u201d when he had to cancel highly sought-after reservations on Saturday. | Source: Kelsey McClellan for The Standard<\/p>\n

For casual Tenderloin pizzeria Outta Sight, the uncertainty and lack of communication from PG&E made it nearly impossible to plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these small business owners like us were trying to play crystal ball,\u201d said chef and owner Eric Ehler. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to go bad, and you have staff standing around who can\u2019t really do anything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The team ended up giving away a bunch of pizzas, but still lost sales and some unsalvageable ingredients. \u201cIt\u2019s just a really shitty feeling all around,\u201d he said. He fears that PG&E won\u2019t be held accountable, either. \u201cWe rely on them, we have no control, and they screw us year after year.\u201d<\/p>\n

For another pizzeria \u2014 the red-hot Jules Pizza in the Lower Haight<\/a> \u2014 Saturday\u2019s blackout was the second time in a week that a PG&E outage had meant lost sales: It had to close early on Thursday because the utility had scheduled a planned outage that night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was already kind of a nightmare for us,\u201d he said, in part because the firm changed the timing with little notice. The restaurant had planned to shut this week for the holiday, so the two extra nights of cancelled service meant wasted stock, vanished sales, and complaints from would-be customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy business just lost somewhere between $10-and-15,000 in the week before we were going to be closed,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure I can afford Christmas presents, you know, and people are mad that they had their dinner reservations cancelled.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

While most would-be diners were understanding, the restaurateurs said, cancelling reservations stung, as did\u00a0the rare negative comments. What comes next is the laborious information gathering and paperwork necessary to file claims, and then a waiting game to see what PG&E will approve.<\/p>\n

In Kim\u2019s case, the unpredictability extends to whether she\u2019ll be able to reopen at all before Christmas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in the dark, for now, figuratively and literally,\u201d Kim said. \u201cHaving gone through the pandemic, I\u2019m just trying to stay calm for my staff, while I figure out a way to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Jeannie Kim, owner of SAMS American Eatery, what was a one-hour inconvenience turned into a one-day challenge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[26034,636,3604,5653,412,101,103,102,104,106,105,4823],"class_list":{"0":"post-105775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-blackout","9":"tag-daniel-lurie","10":"tag-pge","11":"tag-power-outages","12":"tag-restaurants","13":"tag-san-francisco","14":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","15":"tag-san-francisco-news","16":"tag-sf","17":"tag-sf-headlines","18":"tag-sf-news","19":"tag-small-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}