Restaurant week extended in Collingswood after storms left region in the dark

COLLINGSWOOD, New Jersey (WPVI) -- The expression "business as usual" has a new meeting for many shops in Collingswood, New Jersey.

Take Tortilla Press for instance. Earlier this week, their dining room sat empty. Storms this past Monday plunging this vibrant and popular strip of businesses into darkness for three days.

"After the outage a lot of the restaurants lost a lot of food, just being out for so many days," said general manager Joseph Fitzgerald.

And the timing could not have been worse-- as it was restaurant week.

"It draws in a lot of business and brings in a lot of people into town" he added.

So, in an effort to restore what was lost, some of the businesses, including Tortilla Press, Sapori and El Fiore have decided to extend restaurant week through August 2.

"Local business is important to support. I think they depend on local traffic, they depend on the local community," said Albert DiBuonaventura from Mullica Hill.

"It's a great downtown area here and there are lots of great restaurants, so yeah we love it here," added his wife Donna.

Collingswood's retired fire chief also in the area Sunday supporting what he says is one of the most important events of the area.

"They wanted to extend it to the community because they like restaurant week here. It brings people into the town," said Bob Eckert.

The business community is just hopeful they've seen the last of these outages for the time being.

"This weather has been crazy this summer, but yeah we're looking forward to a good end of the summer," Fitzgerald said.

At least eight other restaurants here are participating in the extended restaurant week.

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