VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) – While investigators work to find the cause of a massive fire that tore through three Virginia Beach Oceanfront businesses last week, other businesses nearby are trying to get back to normal.

Lyfestyle Meals wasn’t directly hit by the fire, but it was still heavily impacted.

Their electricity was shut off for several hours, which forced them to throw a lot of their fresh food away.

“We are definitely on the smaller side of business scales and when you suffer that kind of hit, you feel it,” said Lyfestyle Meals owner Colin Smith.

Smith said as soon as he heard about the fire on Tuesday, he rushed down the street to see what happened.

More than 75 firefighters responded to the massive fire that destroyed three businesses and sent smoke high into the air.

While those three businesses are directly next to the building he’s in, it only had some windows blown out and some damage to an upstairs office.

“Compared to what it could’ve been, we’re very lucky it didn’t spread throughout the entire building,” Smith said.

Smith said while he was on scene, he was kept at a distance.

He said it was difficult to watch as nearby businesses went up in smoke while his business was just feet away.

“Flames were bouncing off the side of the building and I was trying to get an answer of, are we going to be able to save the other building, and that was their objective the entire time,” Smith said. “There was a lot of uncertainty and just hours of reignition of the flames and we really didn’t know if we were going to make it through what was happening.”

Lyfestyle Meals is a fresh food meal prep service that prepares and even delivers healthy meals to its customers.

Firefighters had to shut off electricity and gas to the whole block while they fought the flames.

Because Lyfestyle Meals is a fresh food meal prep service, that meant all their food kept in refrigerators couldn’t be sold.

Smith says he lost more than 100 prepped meals, and had to refund some customers who usually pick up on Wednesdays.

“We had to refund some customers from that production day and we had to shift a lot of our operations around to make it conducive to making sure they have their normal track of receiving meals to their homes,” said Smith.

Smith says some customers didn’t request refunds and just asked that their meals be shifted to the next production day, which was Sunday. He says he’s thankful for the support, but it was still a tough hit financially.

“Their lifestyle and livelihoods are connected to what we provide for them so if anyone had to cancel or skip or whatever it may be, I empathize with them and I just hope that moving forward give us that support back that we need,” said Smith.

He says another big hit, Google was saying their business was closed.

Smith says he got on the phone right away and got it taken care of, but between that and roads being closed, it was a rough few days for his business, but looking out on what could’ve been, he knows it could’ve been worse.

“I’m thankful my staff was okay, I’m thankful that we are still in business,” said Smith. “I know what the feeling was like to be literally inches away from what could’ve went steer in the opposite direction. A firefighter told me if the wind was going even 5 miles per hour from East to West, it could’ve went south really fast.”

Fire crews are still working to learn the cause of this fire, but they do tell us it was accidental in nature.