Berkeley’s Delirama on the brink of bankruptcy after persistent PG&E outages cost $100,000 in losses

BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) — Over the past year, Cash Caris and his partner Anahita Cann have invested countless hours and thousands of dollars in their restaurant, Delirama.

But the Berkeley-based company is now on the brink of financial ruin, after last week’s storm knocked out the power for four straight days.

The result? Thousands of pounds of soiled food and lost revenue totaling approximately $100,000.

“It took us years to get to this. We did without it. We lived in a very small apartment. We put all our money into this business. We literally worked seven days a week to have this space,” Caris said.

After the lights return on Friday, Caris says he hoped to reopen his store next Thursday.

But then the unthinkable happened again.

With the latest storm hitting the Bay Area, the restaurant again lost power for several hours on Tuesday, forcing Caris to halt its scheduled shipment of food and upending its reopening plans.

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“It’s not like we’re going somewhere else and making money. What about our employees? They can’t just find another job while we don’t have power,” he said. Curry.

“But it’s not just Delirama that has had problems over the past week. Businesses on Solano Avenue have all faced power outages.

Across the street, Ata Khoja tells ABC7 News that his rug store was also without power for several days over the past week.

He says it cost him thousands of dollars in sales.

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Khoja says for all the money he pays, PG&E should be able to keep the lights on even in a thunderstorm.

“They have to be prepared. Not responding after the service doesn’t exist. Extremely bad days,” Khoja said.

Back at Delirama, Caris and Cann started a GoFundMe page to try and keep their spot open.

Caris says that without community support, Delirama would likely already be bankrupt.

“Thank you very much. Because everything is going to help us, right now, at this stage,” he said.

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