The outages occurred mainly in Jefferson and Boulder counties, forcing many businesses to shut down for the day. At restaurants, that meant lost reservations, lost wages for staff and lost revenue on a Saturday, which would normally be one of the biggest sales days of the week.
For an industry that has long operated on razor-thin margins and is currently navigating the effect of rapidly rising costs for everything from labor to food, this kind of unexpected closure can have a big impact.
A power outage also puts a restaurant's perishables at risk, forcing some to get creative and enlist help to save inventory. At New Yorkese, Steve Redzikowski's Avanti Boulder pizza concept, its Shamrock Foods rep stepped in to rescue over 750 pounds of pizza dough. "Always coming through for us," New Yorkese wrote in an Instagram post.
There was a scramble at Blackbelly, too. "I got zero notice. My staff had more notice than I did. I only knew because of news reports," says Hosea Rosenberg, owner of the Boulder restaurant that recently added a Denver market on Tennyson Street.
"Thankfully, one of our staff members who lives very close to the restaurant told us he had received a message from Xcel earlier in the day, saying that there might be power turned off in that part of town, although our business was never informed of this warning by Xcel, and we got no notice until power was actually off," adds Lauren Feder Rosenberg, Blackbelly co-owner and director of communications for the couple's Little Piggy Hospitality group.
Blackbelly lost power around 3 p.m. on April 6. "We had to save all of our perishable food," Hosea notes. "At any given time, we have around $50,000 or more in food inventory, most of which relies on refrigeration. When the power goes out, you have about four hours to find a new home for all of it. Not fun."
Buckner Family Farm helped Blackbelly save its perishables.
Blackbelly/Instagram
After the Marshall Fire on December 30, 2021, Blackbelly transformed into a relief center to support the community, so the team is well aware of the devastating impact a wildfire could have.
"We're glad a precautionary step was taken proactively for prevention of wildfires, but certainly we're at a loss, especially given it was a Saturday," Lauren says. "And for Boulder, from our perspective, this wind storm seemed fairly tame compared to what we've seen before without interruption. Again, we do appreciate the safety measure, so it's just a tough one."
"All dinner staff all lost their wages for the day. At Blackbelly, we do at least $10,000 in sales for dinner. We had over 100 reservations that had to be canceled. This was bad for everyone. And it’s really upsetting that Xcel didn’t even let us know directly that we would be impacted," Hosea concludes.
It wasn't the only one waiting for an update, unable to plan for possible Sunday service. Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery posted its own message on Facebook around 9 a.m. on April 7: "Xcel Energy, City of Boulder Colorado Government...Any communication on when we can re-open would be appreciated!"
Xcel's response at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 7, to Westword's query on behalf of those businesses: "Xcel Energy crews are out assessing damage to the electric system caused by extremely high winds in parts of Colorado that started yesterday afternoon and continue into this morning. In addition to the 55,000 customers whose electric service was turned off yesterday as a public safety measure, about 100,000 additional customers also have power outages caused by the high winds. With more than 150,000 customers without power due to this weather event, this restoration process will take time and may extend into Monday, April 8 or longer."
"There was no update for fifteen hours," adds Bobby Stuckey, founder of the Frasca restaurant group, which lost power at both Frasca Food and Wine and Pizzeria Alberico. "There were rumors going around about the outages," he adds. "People got notifications at their homes, but it just said 'Some parts of Boulder County and Gilpin County.' What was unfortunate was it just says some places would, so you're just barreling ahead [getting ready for service], and at 3:01 p.m. it went off."
While he understands the importance of safety and that "this is a new era with electric companies working to make sure we don't have fire, the communication was quite poor. They should have said, these are the places where the power will be shut off, plan accordingly. What I think a lot of people don't understand is that in a restaurant, you have to be there for hours ahead."
By the time the power actually shut down, "some of the team had done all the prep and already left," he adds. Then the team was left not knowing if they should prepare for service on Sunday.
The power was not restored at Frasca and Alberico until 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 7. Between the two, Stuckey notes, "we probably lost close to $35,000 in top-line revenue on Saturday and another $25,000 on Sunday. But also what people might not realize is in a restaurant, you work all week for those weekends to make the margins work." Plus, he adds, when the power went out at Pizzeria Alberico on Sunday, the dining room was full, so all of those guests were comped.
The outages also appeared to be very random. Stuckey says that Frasca has product in the walk-ins at Corrida, where the power stayed on, while restaurateur Bryan Dayton's other Boulder eatery, Oak at Fourteenth just down the street, went dark.
At this point, Stuckey adds, it does not look like insurance will cover any of the losses.
"If they had communicated better, the loss of product could have been alleviated," he notes. "There were a lot of options."
Hosea Rosenberg, who also had to keep Blackbelly closed again on Sunday, reiterates that point. "If I had known in advance, not only would I have been better prepared to save our food, I would have been able to coordinate with other restaurants, and we could have done this together so nobody lost any product," he says. "I know there are operators out there who are going to be losing a lot of food from this."
