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Back to Business in Foxborough

Local businesses getting back on their feet after Tropical Storm Irene causes power outages.

Life goes on at the ‘Life Is Good’ retail store at Patriot Place, and business is going well too, even after the powerful winds of Tropical Storm Irene blew through the region and left most of Foxborough at a dead stop.

Power was restored to Route 1 area businesses early Tuesday morning, but as of Wednesday afternoon, many businesses were still operating without power, phone or internet service.

Victor Rodriguez is the manager at the Foxborough ‘Life Is Good’ location, and says that, although the company was grateful to have the electricity restored, operating without internet or phone lines makes any business much more difficult for employees to conduct.

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However, Rodriguez said business was about as steady as usual in the days following Irene, and added that most of his employees are just happy to be working.

As Foxborough Board of Selectmen Chairman, Lawrence Harrington, reminded the press, “In the retail business, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid.”

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However, for the restaurants of Foxboro, the loss was felt a little more sharply.

At Tavolino restaurant, manager Liz Stone said they “had to throw away a lot of food, which definitely hurt.”

At Patriot Place, where Tavolino is located, businesses were out of power from Sunday morning until Tuesday, a much shorter period of time than most Foxborough commerce. Even that short lapse in business, according to Stone, “hurt in sales.”

The popular downtown Foxborough restaurant, , has been without power since Sunday and was forced to throw away $4,000 in food according to WCVB-TV.

After opening Tuesday morning, Stone says most of the patrons they saw in the days that followed were area residents, still suffering without power at their homes.

“We had a lot of locals wanting to come in and watch the Sox games,” Stone said, “but until (Wednesday), we didn’t have any cable, so we couldn’t even put it on for them.”

While the locals may have been coming out for a hot meal, they were not the ones doing the retail shopping, according to Rodriguez.

“Since the storm, we haven’t seen a lot of local shoppers,” he said.

“The people in the stores are tourists, and Patriot Place is an area that draws a lot of tourists. A ton of the people we saw at Life Is Good this week were New Yorkers, who were already in town for the Patriots- Giants game on Thursday,” he added.

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