Thanksgiving day is one of the top five grossing days for the restaurant industry, with owners and managers gearing up weeks in advance to run everything smoothly and keep their customers happy.
"You prepare for a day like that and spend a week and thousands of dollars and tons of labor," says Bob Scofield, owner of the 357th Fighter Group, "and then for this to happen."
At approximately 12:10 pm, Scofield’s restaurant lost power.
"According to the power company, there was a squirrel on the line," Scofield says. "I find it hard to believe. It happened to me the week before. It’s happened seven times in 1998 alone."
The 357th Fighter Group was able to stay open until 1:30 pm, serving 528 people. Scofield made arrangements with Tangiers, Mountain Jacks, Hometown Buffet and other area restaurants to take care of his approximately 900 remaining customers. Then Scofield and his crew set out to contact as many of their customers as possible via cell phone.
"You can never recover completely from something like this," Scofield says. "A lot of our customers were really unhappy, but what could we do?"
The disgruntled customers and an estimated loss of $30,000 are behind Scofield, but there is one thing he’s doing to prevent a recurrence.
"We’re going to get a generator to run the restaurant and use the power company as a backup," he says. "Then I won’t be dependent on anybody and I can serve my customers when they’re supposed to be served."