TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) — Tallahassee’s iconic canopy roads in the northeast side can sometimes interfere with power during storm season.
John Schrowang, owner of Red Elephant Pizza and Grill, said the power is one of his most unpredictable parts of running his restaurant.
“We’ve had a lot of issues in the restaurant business recently, staffing, food costs,” Schrowang said. “We can control those issues. The power going out, we have no control over.”
He said he lost power on a Friday and Saturday night within the last month, which are some of their busiest hours.
Schrowang said he loses money when power goes out in his restaurant.
“We are in the business to generating sales and when the power is out, we can’t generate any sales,” Schrowang said.
He is not alone. According to Twitter posts by the city, power outages impacted over 30,000 people in Tallahassee last month.
People like Jennifer Waller, who had her power go out six times in the last month in her neighborhood off of Miccosukee Road.
“It’s concerning that we are having that many power outages in a 30 day period,” Waller said.
As someone who works from home, she said the outages can impact her workflow.
“It can be really annoying sitting here knowing I should be working on something but I can’t do anything,” Waller said.
To avoid further issues with electricity, Leon County Government tweeted that crews would be trimming trees back from power lines.Many of power outages happen due to storm related accidents, like trees and limbs falling on power lines.
Schrowang said he thinks the city needs to find a solution.
“As a restaurant owner, we deal with problems every day. We’re problem solvers and this is a problem that needs to be solved,” Schrowang said.
ABC 27’s Kendall Brandt reached out to City of Tallahassee Utilities to ask about how they work to prevent power outages during summer months.
Our team did not hear back by the time of this broadcast.
Whether you get your electric from Talquin or the city, you can always call those agencies or look on their website to report power outages in your area.
