Kroger grocery store scrambles after Ann Arbor power outage
While thousands of families were in the dark last night, Wednesday's power outage left at least one Ann Arbor business scrambling to save its product.
Kroger at 400 S. Maple Road lost electricity for about 10 hours last night after a winter storm caused a fire in a major power transformer at West Liberty Street and Maple Road.
“There was quite a bit of disruption,” said Ann Arbor resident Jim Kane, who was shopping this morning in the grocery store. “They had a lot of employees just restocking stuff.”
Dale Hollandsworth, a spokesman for Kroger, said despite the outage, no inventory was lost.
“(The store employees) reacted quickly, and as a result, they did not sustain any loss,” he said. “I would have to applaud that store team - they just did a fabulous job.”
Hollandsworth said the store rushed its fresh items to a refrigerated truck and was able to pack its frozen goods in dry ice to preserve them. By 4:15 a.m., when the power was restored, he said the food had survived the night.
“We had a guy there all night to constantly go around checking cases in coolers to see if temperatures held throughout night,” he said. “It just never happens that everything has to be thrown away, unless something really dramatic happened.”
Comments
CommonThought
Fri, Dec 11, 2009 : 8:06 p.m.
Every Meijer store has two massive backup generators that power most of the store and the gas station. During the outage of 2003 I remember them receiving a fuel delivery.
zollar
Fri, Dec 11, 2009 : 5:36 p.m.
Meijer has backup generators. They power most freezers/coolers and cash registers and they at most times remain open.
An
Fri, Dec 11, 2009 : 12:35 p.m.
@Ed, yes, Bush's was open during 2003 power outage. My children and I were there. They were taking cash and checks. I was surprised they would take checks, but they did.
unclemercy
Fri, Dec 11, 2009 : 9:50 a.m.
i agree. open the doors and refrigerate the whole store. fabulous job, kroger.
Blklight
Fri, Dec 11, 2009 : 7:48 a.m.
As cold as it's been lately, perhaps Kroger could have just stuck their refrigerated items right outside and they could have been ok?
C6
Thu, Dec 10, 2009 : 9:29 p.m.
"Why in the world would a grocery store not have a backup gas powered generator for preserving essential items?" I suspect the answer to that question is the same reason almost no retailers have emergency power: cost. Kroger probably has insurance that covers any large loses of stock due to things like power outages, and the incident deductible cost would be considerably less than the cost for having an emergency power system installed. DTE would probably love for us all to have natural gas fueled emergency power generation systems, since they could take their sweet time in making power line repairs without a lot of customer complaints, all the while selling us that much more expensive gas.
751
Thu, Dec 10, 2009 : 8:33 p.m.
@Tru2Blu76, the Michigan Public Service Commission (www.michigan.gov/mpsc) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (www.ferc.gov) will provide you a host of opportunities to research the regulations which DTE and other providers must abide by.
GMC
Thu, Dec 10, 2009 : 7:46 p.m.
Why in the world would a grocery store not have a backup gas powered generator for preserving essential items?
C6
Thu, Dec 10, 2009 : 6:08 p.m.
Yes, and as DTE has reminded me more than once in the past during outages, Kroger should be thankful for the money they saved during the 10 hours they were without power. They won't be billed for that power they couldn't get!