CARTHAGE, N.C. — After days of not having power in Moore County, many people are finally seeing the light again and getting back to business as usual.
This comes after approximately 45,000 customers experienced a power outage on Saturday because of two Duke Energy substations being shot at.
What You Need To Know
- Pete’s Family Restaurant lost power from Saturday evening to Tuesday morning
- During the outage, they were able to transport food to their other restaurant to help save items
- The owner of Pete’s Family Restaurant said this power outage reassured them that the community is all in this together
One place affected by this was Pete’s Family Restaurant. For the owner, Yianni Kakouras, he thought Saturday would not differ from any other, greeting customers, serving them and helping his team in any way he can. But that wasn’t the case.
“It’s just one big bad dream if you want to know the truth,” Kakouras said.
The owner said their initial thought about the power going out was that it was just an accident, but once they knew more, Kakouras said they buckled up and went with it.
“I never would I have thought of a group of individuals waking up one day and going, ‘Let’s go put 50,000 people out of power and ruin peoples’ lives,’” Kakouras said.
They ended up cleaning and closing up shop for the rest of the evening. “It wasn’t until everybody was out of here and I was in here alone, and I was getting phone calls going, ‘Oh my goodness, this has turned into something I didn’t think,’” Kakouras said.
With power still not restored on Sunday, the establishment started pulling items off the shelves. Kakouras said they didn’t lose a lot of food and could transport goods to their other restaurant that still had power.
“On a minor scale compared to what could’ve been lost, you know, your deli meats, things of that nature, whatever we store, our salad unit, things like that, very, very minor scale,” Kakouras said. “Very thankful, fortunate, my heart does go out to individuals who are going to lose their entire coolers and their entire freezers.”
Despite closing their doors for days, they remained busy at their other Moore County restaurant as more customers flooded in.
“It’s been a wild ride, I mean insane busy, constantly something going on, I’m pretty exhausted,” Kakouras said.
But they knew once power was restored at their Carthage business, all hands would be on deck. That is exactly what happened Tuesday morning.
“Rat race, you have to do everything from scratch, you know, you’re boiling all new noodles, pastas, potatoes, we have a tremendously long menu,” Kakouras said.
Now, with business back to usual at Pete’s Family Restaurant, the owner is giving kudos to his team and the community for pulling together during this time.
“I guess it’s easy for us as individuals and kind of get disconnected and then a tragic event or something like this happens and then here we are, all pulling together making sure we get through it,” Kakouras said.