Johannesburg – The Linden branch of popular burger joint Buns Out has become one of the latest victims of load shedding.
The announcement was made in a tweet stating that the eatery would cease trading on October 9, citing the effects of load shedding as the primary cause for the closure.
Co-founder Tom Savage highlighted the difficulties the business had faced over the past few years due to Covid-19, saying load shedding had compounded their problems.
With heavy heart today we announce the closing of our linden store. Our last day will be on the 9th of October and we will be having a huge send off! See you there 😘 pic.twitter.com/Tvow2KoCRw
— Buns Out Burgers (@BunsoutL) September 27, 2022
“It’s been tough. It’s been a struggle ever since Covid and we’ve survived through various bouts of load shedding, but we’ve never been able to find a proper operation with generating capacity and have gas grills, and electric grills, and fryers and freezers. This last bout of load shedding has been going for three to four weeks and when we got put into stage 6, it was like a nail in the coffin,” Savage said.
“It’s not to say that we couldn’t keep going, it’s a question of like ‘do we want to keep going?’ when it’s a fight everyday to get through, to get to the other side to make ends meet.”
Savage highlighted that as a small company that had been running for less than three years they just simply couldn’t afford a generator, which would cost them about R55 000 to install.
This is the second Buns Out branch to close. The Parkwood branch ceased trading in July last year. The closure was a result of the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.
Buns Out Linden, co-founded by Tom Savage and media personality Maps Maponyane, was launched in September 2019.
It is not the end of Buns Out, however. Another tweet indicated that they would reopen once they were able to get the infrastructure in place to operate despite load shedding.
We are open at PBM Wednesday to Sunday from 11am until late 🙏 in Linden we have 2 weeks of operating left 💪🥳
Despite the closure of the Linden branch, loyal patrons can still get their fill of Buns Out meals at the Prison Break Market in Glenferness, between Lonehill and Kyalami, where Buns Out occupies a stall.
“For us it makes more sense to let go of the operation, consolidate what we’ve got, just operate out of one stall and then maybe when we can afford to come back and do a proper generator operation then we can look at it,” Savage said.
vusi.adonis@inl.co.za
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