Small businesses frustrated after late morning power outage

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX) — According to AEP, just under 6,000 customers were without power in Fairfield County Wednesday morning.

AEP says they were able to get everything fixed in under two hours.

Still small business owners throughout Lancaster said that they felt the impact of the outage.

“It happened right about 10 o’clock, which looking at my sales trends for the past two weeks, is actually my busiest hour,” Emmett Collins, the owner of L-City Coffee said. “So, I missed out on that.”

Collins also said he initially sent his employees home after AEP said the outage wouldn’t be fixed until 1 p.m.

Without power, they also weren’t able to adjust their online ordering system which led to additional frustration.

“We couldn’t log into DoorDash to turn that off, so we kept getting orders coming through and then calls from DoorDash wondering why we’re not keeping our end of the deal,” Collins said.

El Parian Steaks and Tequila is located right next door to L-City Coffee. They had to delay their opening an hour and half because of the outage.

“It’s very frustrating for our customers because when they come through the doors and see they see that we have signs because we don’t have the means to get that information out to them; they’ve wasted their time coming to us,” Kyla Jenkins, a server and bartender said.

While the kitchen worked to get everything ready for customers, the servers waited until they could start working as well.

“We also can’t make that money as servers,” Jenkins said. “Each of us would probably have already had like three to four tables by now. Each of those tables being anywhere from like a two top to an eight top.”

AEP says that they are still investigating to figure out what may have caused this power outage.

They say that they aren’t expecting any future power hits due to the hot weather and that their equipment is built to withstand any temperature.