Alison McLean
Audio By Carbonatix
If you tapped your A/C up a few degrees Monday or paused your Bitcoin mining operation from 2 to 8 p.m., local restaurants are grateful.
Restaurant operators across Texas breathed a sigh of relief Monday night as they turned off their lights at the end of a nervous-hot day. On Sunday, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) asked Texans to conserve electricity and issued an official watch for potential electric capacity shortages, which could have resulted in rolling blackouts. Record-high demand cause by a continuing heatwave pinched output.
ERCOT emphasized conservation from 2 to 8 p.m., and, particularly, the grid operator called on large electric consumers to lower their use during the day. The Texas Rangers even adjusted the thermostat at Globe Life Field to 75 degrees rather than 72.
And nearly all industrial-scale Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down operations, but don’t say, “Aw, bless their hearts.” Fortune explains they actually got paid shut down by ERCOT.
As the lights stayed on, the coolers hummed and beers stayed cold, and Dallas restaurants and bars missed a close one.
Fork in the Road is a small family-owned restaurant in Arlington that lost coolers of food, days of business, and had to repair busted pipes during the winter storm blackout of February 2021. More recently they posted on Facebook that they were potentially nearing the end of the road for their restaurant because of slow business and high costs. Then last week, their energy bill increased drastically after their previous contract expired.
“Our electric bill is as much as our rent now,” said chef and owner Josh Hopkins.
That doesn’t mean that having the power cut off in a rolling blackout would help anything.
“If we lose power, then I have no vent hood, which sucks all the heat up, so I can’t cook. We have two smaller walk-ins, so those will start to rise in temperature within 15 minutes, which would cause all our products to get in a danger zone. Then, we don’t have an old-school register, so if I lose power we can’t take orders,” Hopkins says.
“It’s horrible!” Brent Reaves, co-owner of Smokey John’s Barbecue in Dallas responded via text when asked how a rolling outage could affect restaurants. “You will lose all money during a blackout. All of your systems are down. That means cash only. Once they [customers] know your power is out they stop and turn around to leave. In a few hours, you could lose three to five thousand dollars, depending on the day.”
In February, the National Restaurant Association released a report on the state of the service industry. They found that while overall the sector continues to grow, more than half of restaurant operators who participated in their study said it would be a year or more before business conditions return to normal. “Food, labor and occupancy costs are expected to remain elevated, and continue to impact profit margins in 2022,” the report stated.
“It’s the randomness that hurts us for the fact that we can’t prepare for it,” said Cosmo’s owner and chef Jackson Tran. “It all depends on the time of day or night it occurs that we will know how much that it affects us.” In terms of preparing for potential blackouts, Tran says it depends on timing. If they’re at the restaurant, they can ice down meats and produce or even move them to another location.
Rolling blackouts will also affect service industry workers. Chris Beardon with SBBC Hospitium, the company behind Barcadia, Dahlia and the Tipsy Alchemist, points out that staff loses shifts and there’s the potential loss of perishable inventory. “It could certainly put a massive stress on costs for an already tight-margin business,” Beardon said.
Charlotte Tate with the Londoner Pub and Grill points out that if the restaurant heats up, it would take at least until the next evening to cool it back down. The keg coolers would also warm, meaning the beer would be foamy. A hot restaurant and warm foamy beer certainly won’t help business.
“Restaurants are still dealing with supply chain issues, worker shortages and unpredictable business levels, the last thing we need is to have to worry about the electrical grid, again,” Tate says.
