Nantucket’s holiday weekend power outage is leaving businesses reeling

“This is literally our Super Bowl,” said Andrea Solimeo, co-owner of Ventuno Restaurant and Gemelle Pizzeria, both of which had lost power by Sunday afternoon. “This is the biggest day of the day for us, both in terms of sales and culture. It’s hard to lose this one.”

Solimeo estimated he lost up to $100,000 in revenue. He and other downtown business owners said Saturday’s annual Christmas walk is an event they base their annual budgets on.

“For this one day, we (workers) are flying in from outside the city,” Solimeo said. “To get to that point, we’re keeping people busy throughout November.”

Peter Burke, executive director of the Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce, which organizes the event, said business leaders met for hours Monday afternoon to coordinate efforts to support colleagues who had lost their businesses, including 200 chamber members who had lost power for varying periods of time.

“There were some hotels, retailers and restaurants,” he said. “It’s a big tourism weekend and we mourn the loss of the affected member companies.”

Burke said many supporters are purchasing gift cards from affected businesses to help, and For Now, a custom embroidery boutique on Center Street, has introduced a limited-edition collection of “Lights Out” items to raise money for affected service members .

Rachel Afshari, co-owner of Lemon Press, said the Main Street organic cafe also lost about $100,000 in weekend business after opening at 8 a.m. Saturday because “there was a line out the door.” .

“We have about 150 seats, and we’ve just started to really take off,” Afshari said. “Then the power went out at 10:18 a.m. and we were all confused, waiting for it to come back on.”

The wait lasted until Sunday.

“So we’re just watching National Grid, and they kept increasing the estimated restoration time, from 1 a.m., and then it went to about 4 a.m., then to 6 a.m., then to 9 a.m., and then to 12 p.m. – it kept pushing longer and longer,” she said.

Power was restored just in time for the cafe’s closing time at 2 p.m., she said.

According to National Grid, the outage began around 10:20 a.m. Saturday and initially affected around 1,450 customers. Service had been restored to around 1,175 customers by afternoon, but full restoration took until 1:30 p.m. Sunday.

“The outage was caused by two sections of underground power cable that required replacement,” the utility said in a statement on Sunday. An investigation is underway.

Solimeo said the blackout affected “a very select geographical area.” . . . It was like a strange teardrop shape of shops and restaurants.”

Orla LaScola is co-owner of Proprietors Bar & Table on India Street, which lost power, and a sister restaurant, Black Eyed Susan’s, across Center Street, which did not lose power.

“People couldn’t use their credit cards, and then Venmo stopped working because the cells were broken because they had no power,” LaScola said.

LaScola said about 200 local business owners plan to voice their concerns at Wednesday night’s Nantucket Select Board meeting. The city has requested that a representative from National Grid attend.

Nantucket Current, which first reported the power outage, said the Nantucket Health Department asked 15 downtown restaurants to close at 4:30 p.m. Saturday and ordered several to throw away food that could not be refrigerated .

A city spokesman could not immediately confirm this these facts and declined to make City Manager C. Elizabeth Gibson available for an interview with the Globe.

Solimeo and Afshari said Nantucket officials visited their restaurants.

“The health department came to our facility while we were preparing for lunch. . . after we lost power,” Solimeo said. “They came in and said anything that can’t be refrigerated and loses temperature needs to be thrown out within two hours.”

Lemon Press employees stopped operations after the fire department told them they would have to close at 4:30 p.m., leaving piles of dishes in the darkened kitchen, Afshari said. Like many restaurants, Lemon Press had to throw away much of the food it had ordered for the busy weekend and decided to feed it to pigs raised on a local farm.

“Me and a few of my friends went to the pigs last night and brought them everything and they really liked it,” Afshari said. “So it’s recycling at its best: the pigs will eat it, and one day we’ll eat the pigs.”

Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @jeremycfox.