QUICK-thinking shopkeepers stopped a cafe blaze from spreading to other businesses yesterday in Mission Beach's popular tourist strip.

But the fire still did enough damage to close Early Birds Coffee Shop where flames gutted the kitchen and thick smoke filled the premises.

Neighbours came running with fire extinguishers when oil in an electric deep fryer caught alight in the two-storey shopping complex’s ground-floor cafe on Porters Promenade about 9.30am.

"People came from everywhere – they kept giving me more extinguishers and we couldn’t thank them enough," the cafe’s Guy Ramage said.

He was cooking when the fryer, at the other end of the kitchen, started smoking and a fire broke out.

A group of people took about 40 minutes to contain the blaze which kept reigniting and spread from the deep fryer into the kitchen hood from where flames began licking the ceiling.

Devastated business owners Neil and Rhonda Ramage said it was lucky no one had been hurt.

But the fire could not have come at a worse time for them – right in the middle of the school holidays, during the peak tourist season and in a year when the tourism industry was doing it tough.

Their cafe is likely to be closed for two weeks.

"The season’s just starting to pick up … in the past few weeks it’s probably picked up 50-60 per cent and this is the couple of months we really rely on," Mrs Ramage said.

The family believes the thermostat on their deep fryer may have malfunctioned.

They needed eight fire extinguishers to put out the blaze.

"We cleaned out just about every shop in town – the people in this community are amazing," Mr Ramage said.

Fire fighters arrived from El Arish and Innisfail to find the blaze already extinguished, but said it was only quick-thinking and a team effort that saved the cafe and the business complex from more serious damage.

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