MACON, Ga. — The owners of Macon's S&S Cafeteria say they plan to reopen quickly and safely after a fire damaged the restaurant over the weekend.
Their Riverside Drive location is temporarily closed after a kitchen fire which happened around midnight early Sunday.
Fire Chief Shane Edwards told us they put out the blaze by 2 a.m., and no one was hurt in the fire.
Brittany Gray says she's been eating at the S&S cafeteria for 10 years and never expected it to catch on fire.
“I’m devastated,” Brittany Gray said.
Rick Pogue - the CEO of the Macon S&S locations - says both S&S cafeteria locations had power outages on Saturday.
“11 o'clock or so Saturday night, and I thought it was someone calling to tell me that we had power,” Pogue said.
It turned out to be about a fire at the S&S Riverside location.
“It was a call from the guy that said the fire company had called him, the alarm company, and that we had a fire, and the fire department was on the scene,” Pogue said.
The business has been open for nearly 85 years and is known as a family-friendly restaurant. George Potter says he traveled to Macon to finally get a taste.
“We drove probably a couple hours and found out when we got here that it was closed,” Potter said.
Pogue says they've already started the cleanup process.
“Once the cleanup is done, then the insurance adjusters will come in, we'll get the contractors to start working on repairing the building,” Pogue said.
He says they've received nearly 1,000 emails from prayer groups and the public praying for them.
“For everyone to pray, for our coworkers, that we can get back open as quickly as possible. As I said, we are committed to do that, but just our loyal guests, we're so thankful,” Pogue said.
Pogue says he hopes to re-open in the next 3 to 4 months.