BANGOR — Power outages at four Hannaford stores will force the company to dispose of thousands of pounds of food.

Power was knocked out at Hannafords on Hogan Road and Broadway in Bangor, as well as the company’s supermarkets in Old Town and Ellsworth, during a Nov. 2 snowstorm that left more than 140,000 Mainers without power Sunday night into Monday.

Behind the Broadway Hannaford Monday afternoon were dozens of shopping carts filled with assorted refrigerated and frozen goods that will go to waste. Broadway Hannaford was closed Monday, while the other three stores remain open, running on generators, according to Hannaford spokesman Eric Blom. A mechanical malfunction in the Broadway store’s generator prevented that store from remaining open, Blom said.

The generators don’t provide enough power to run all of the stores’ refrigerators and freezers.

Blom didn’t have an estimate of how much food will be lost or how much it would cost the company, but it’s likely a substantial loss.

“We have a very detailed protocol and surveillance process for food and food temperatures,” Blom said. When food has not been stored at correct temperatures for an extended period of time it becomes unsafe.

Even ice cream, which could be safe to consume even if it melts and is refrozen, wouldn’t meet Hannaford’s quality standards and is no longer saleable, Blom said.

“When we’re able to, we compost. Some goes to a biomass facility to generate electricity,” Blom said. The rest will need to be sent to a landfill.

Generators allowed the three Hannafords that remained open in spite of the power loss to continue serving customers at the checkout counters and at the pharmacies.

“The biggest thing for us is our customers,” Blom said. “We know many of them are without power themselves.”

Extended power outages aren’t unexpected in Maine, nor are the losses of revenue and product they cause, Blom said.

“It’s part of doing business in northern New England,” Blom said. “We appreciate our customers’ understanding.”