As an extreme heat wave continues to scorch St. Albert, local businesses are finding ways to adapt.
Pizza and bruschetta are temporarily off the menu at Luisa Risto, a downtown Italian restaurant.
Both items must be baked in the restaurant’s pizza oven, and if it’s extremely hot outside, starting the oven can shoot kitchen temperatures past 50 C, said owner Ed Cordova.
“The heat right now is just getting to be beyond healthy standards,” Cordova said. “I didn't want to put my kitchen team in any kind of jeopardy.”
Cordova estimates that he sells only five pizzas a day, but the bruschetta is a very popular menu item.
“That’s definitely going to hurt our sales a bit,” he said.
Customers have been understanding, but at least one table cancelled reservations yesterday, he said.
“It is what it is,” he said. “If I have to lose a table or two over this, I don't care. I'd rather take care of my staff.”
Nearby bakery BreadLove considered temporarily closing this week, said staff member Jeff Duncan.
“We’ve been struggling with keeping our fridges and freezers cold,” he said.
Opening the bakery’s freezers, even in short bursts, while the intense heat wafts in from outdoors can raise freezer temperatures by anywhere from 7 C to 10 C.
That’s perilous for items such as cookies that need to stay frozen, Duncan said.
“[The products] are frozen raw so we can bake them,” Duncan said. “If they thaw, they're pretty much done.”
The bakery has managed to stay open by practicing extreme vigilance around keeping freezer and refrigerator doors closed and maintaining a watchful eye on temperatures, Duncan said.
A1 Heating and One Hour Plumbing has received 219 calls so far this week for air conditioning installation and repairs. That’s double the volume compared to an ordinary week this May, when owner Curtis Crouse said the business was already busier than usual.
“Working in the heat is brutal,” Crouse said. “There’s enough calls that if the guys wanted to, they could work until midnight, but you can't physically do it. You have to remind guys to get lots of food and drink lots of water, and eat heavy early … It’s hard.”
The extreme heat can strain air conditioning systems, and some systems simply aren’t sized to handle “Arizona-style” weather, Crouse said.
Many St. Albertans have decided the time has come to install air conditioning.
“After three sleepless nights, the person who was losing the ‘let’s get an air conditioner’ argument starts winning the ‘let’s get an air conditioner argument,’” Crouse said.
Karen Moak, pharmacist and owner of Midtown Apothecary, which sells a variety of ice cream, said business can slow down when it gets too hot outside.
But that hasn’t been the case this week.
“Ice cream sales are booming and there’s tons of grandparents bringing their grandkids,” Moak said. “But nobody’s eating their ice cream outside. It would melt in a second.”
