As community members look to restock their refrigerators following four days of countywide power outages, many may find empty shelves at local grocery stores.

Restaurants weren’t the only businesses forced to throw out stocks of perishable food items after Friday’s derecho storm knocked out the power to refrigerators and freezers in grocery stores across Montgomery County. 

Patch saw dozens of store workers cleaning and restocking empty shelves in Safeway and Giant store locations on River and Falls roads in Potomac Monday morning. The stores were open for business, but had little in the way of frozen foods, ice, produce and other perishables.

Many shelves were empty or quickly running out of perishable food at the Safeway at the Shoppes at Sumner Place shopping center in Bethesda. The store re-opened Monday after a weekend-long closure.

The River Falls Seafood market in Potomac managed to ice down and save some of its stock, according to store owner Jeff Grolig, but other businesses weren’t so lucky.

In Chevy Chase, one neighborhood institution is reeling from its losses. When the Chevy Chase Supermarket, a neighborhood grocer for nearly 60 years, lost power Friday night, owners Kevin and Jason Kirsch moved the perishables to a refrigerated trailer. On Sunday afternoon, the brothers realized the refrigeration system in the trailer had given out, raising the temperature to 62 degrees and forcing them to toss all the food.

The continued closure of area grocery stores doesn’t just hurt a community searching for food; it also puts store workers out of a job. 

What was your experience at the grocery stores following Friday’s derecho? Were you able to restock your refrigerator, or was the selection picked bare?