‘It’s hopeless’: Southport food outlets dump stock as blackout costs businesses thousands

A sudden power outage at Australia Fair, Southport on Friday has left small food outlets with significant financial losses.

An unexplained power outage causes Australia Fair, Southport food outlets to throw out ingredients and lose thousands of dollars in expected revenue. Picture: Dean Kerrison

A sudden power outage at Australia Fair, Southport on Wednesday has left small food outlets with significant financial losses.

A blackout from 12.45pm caused businesses, including the entire food court, to lose electricity – and up to five figures of dollars in revenue for certain stores.

David Wei, franchisee of nutritional cafe chain Soul Origin, was concerned about the food in the fridge.

“Power is not coming, so it’s a big loss, because all the food we couldn’t sell will go to the bin,” he said as employees were seen scraping salad ingredients into the waste.

“The food can’t last tomorrow, so it’s $10,000 of ingredients in sales lost for the day.

“We’re closing now,” Mr Wei said at 1.50pm.

“Very bad.”

An unexplained power outage causes Australia Fair, Southport food outlets to throw out ingredients and lose thousands of dollars in expected revenue. Picture: Dean Kerrison

The manager of PappaRich, Jessica Liu, echoed these sentiments.

“Obviously, there’s no customers,” she said.

“The whole day’s income is gone.”

Ms Liu said the franchise was missing $4000 in revenue for the day.

“We worry, because if too long, we probably need to throw out ingredients.

“I’m frustrated – it’s hopeless.”

Another PappaRich staff member said a similar blackout occurred for much of the day in August 2024, causing a similarly negative financial impact.

An Energex spokesman said power, the loss of which affected 296 customers, was restored at 4pm.

“There were some underground cable issues and the crew have been working on those,” he said.

“The crew are trying to find the damage to our equipment.”

Other outages occurred in the region today, one affecting 885 customers (356 still affected at 4.25pm) around Smith St, Southport and another impacting 32 in Broadbeach and Surfers Paradise.

An unexplained power outage causes Australia Fair, Southport food outlets to throw out ingredients and lose thousands of dollars in expected revenue. Picture: Dean Kerrison

“We can restore the power gradually, sort of like if your house trips at home and you go around turning appliances on and off to see which one’s tripping your house, like you turn your toaster on and the power stays on, then your heater or aircon or fan, and if one appliance trips your home, you know what’s going on,” the spokesman said.

“That’s what our crew’s doing but on a much larger scale.

“When you’re running three and a half million homes and businesses, sometimes a fault will happen and that’s what’s happened here.

“We do all due diligence and maintenance on the network to reduce the number of outages ... but occasionally, unforeseen outages can occur.”

The two remaining outages were expected to be fully restored in a matter of minutes or hours.

Originally published as ‘It’s hopeless’: Southport food outlets dump stock as blackout costs businesses thousands