The owner of the Alexandra pie cart escaped with minor burns after fleeing the kerbside diner just as it erupted in flames on Saturday afternoon.
Owners Trevor Lyons and Lynne Giles said yesterday they were still in a state of shock but it was good "to know that we have so much support in the town".
Since news of the fire appeared on the Otago Daily Times website and various social networking sites, their phones had been ringing almost non-stop with calls from people as far away as England.
Mr Lyons was in the kerbside diner, making a start on the nightly preparations, about 4.45pm, when he noticed "a few wisps of smoke coming from the oil".
He opened a window, turned on the extractor fan and continued on with his preparation but there "seemed to be an increasing amount of smoke" so he opened the doors, got the fire extinguisher and dialled 111.
The next thing he knew there was someone at the door yelling at him to "get out of there".
He dropped the phone as "the thing went whoof" and ran out the door.
He described feeling an "intense heat" as the flames licked him, melting his vest and burning his "feathers".
Onlookers poured on to the street as the Alexandra Volunteer Fire Brigade battled the flames.
Many reported seeing a "massive" ball of smoke and "really high" flames coming from the cart, which was parked outside the town's museum and information centre on Centennial Ave.
Mr Lyons was taken by ambulance to Dunstan Hospital but later released with only a blistered ear and singed hair.
Central North Otago fire risk management officer Stuart Ide inspected the ruined diner yesterday.
"Everything indicates it is of electrical origin.
"It appears that something has failed; maybe the thermostat control."
He said he would need to "do a bit more research", including talking to Mr Lyons, Ms Giles and their insurance company, before coming to a definite conclusion.
Ms Giles said she "would like to be able to say a phoenix rises from the ashes, but we don't know . . . we would like to see it live on.
"We do have insurance but don't really know where we go from here yet."
Yesterday, they said they could not bring themselves to go and see what was left of their business but hoped that it could be rebuilt or re-created.
The couple operated the pie cart from Thursday through to Sunday nights from about 6pm to 4.30am.
It was their only source of income.
They bought it 16 years ago with the intention of running it for only a couple of years but decided they liked the social aspect too much to leave.
Eight years ago, they decided to put it on the market but it did not sell and they had just recently been "testing the market" again "because we're getting older and we decided it was time to get out of the game".
This time, they had done extensive renovations including new whiteware and benchtop.
Ms Giles said there had been a pie cart in Alexandra for about 60 years and theirs was, apart from the new Ranfurly pie cart, perhaps the only one still operating in the South Island.
