LONGVIEW, Texas — After days of no power, many East Texans now have electricity to cool off and that includes restaurants as they prepare to turn on those burners to welcome in a hungry crowd.
One of those is Rodolfo Stefano, the owner of the Tuscan Pig in Longview. He said he didn't know how strong the extent of the storm would be. They first lost power as the storms rolled in later Thursday night.
"[The text message] said power would be restored at 5 a.m. So okay, three hours, nothing to sweat about," Stefano said.
However, that wasn’t the case. Stefano said he didn't have power for four days.
"We lost our two premier dates. Friday and Saturday night," Stefano said. "We estimated close to $10,000 for the two days, not only for the loss of revenue but also to maintain the building."
SWEPCO told Stefano power would be restored by Friday, June 23, thankfully it came back sooner. Unlike many businesses, Stefano didn’t have to throw away any food.
"We had a friend here in Lake Port that had a walk-in cooler that we could store things in there," Stefano said.
Stefano said since his restaurant has been opened for 10 years and all the storms and power outages they've experienced, he has never had to owe his workers a wage.
"It’s not their fault that the power was out," Stefano said.
Until this time around.
"They were gracious enough to accept a gift card from the restaurant here that kind of covered their two days of pay," Stefano said.
Moving forward, Stefano is planning to buy a generator but that is not an easy task as a small business owner.
"A generator to run an establishment this size runs out $40-50,000... might as well be a million," Stefano said.
Vice president of the Gilmer Chamber of Commerce Matt Pool said it’s too soon to tell just what economic impact this power outage has left across the area.
"I have no idea what the numbers would be yet. I don’t think that data would even be available yet," Pool said.
Pool is also a pastor at a local church and he said they’re at day seven without power. They couldn’t open up their doors this past Sunday, so they held a streaming of the service online.