Bruce Buschel had a fire in his Southfork Kitchen restaurant in June 2011. These are the lessons he shares…
There are three general areas that my insurance should cover: rebuilding that which was damaged, replacing lost inventory and business interruption. It could take one month or six to collect any money. The policy could pay in full or not. If the outcome is infelicitous, lawsuits could follow. The whole mess could get even messier, and I still have much to learn, all of which I would rather not be learning. This is the wisdom the serpent promised.
In the meantime, here are five things I think I know about insurance.
Honesty Is Best for the Policy
When in the course of insurance events, you are asked to estimate the value of your property, the contents therein, and the projected revenue, be honest. Not too high, not too low. Walk the middle path. Positive projections will cost you more each month in premiums, but negativism will catch up with you when calamity strikes.
Coping with Copious Records
You think you’re compulsive? Find someone more compulsive, and put that person in charge of keeping records. This person will drive you crazy until money is missing or a delivery is questioned or invoices are misplaced. Then the handiwork will restore sanity, for he or she will have kept records of every napkin, every fish head, every inspection, every warranty, every spec sheet, every beer keg, every reservation, every e-mail, every hour logged by every employee. You cannot possess too many records. Or backups of those records. Computers fail. Files disappear. Restaurants burn.
Preparation for Reparations
Pretend you are located near a nuclear power plant and a tsunami is brewing off the coast. Your employee manual should outline the responsibilities of every person on site in case of any emergency: escape routes, gathering places, location of fire extinguishers, contacts for the alarm company and police department. Like kids in elementary school, you and your employees should have practice drills. What do you want your servers to say to guests? Who grabs the money? Who saves the records? Insurance companies want to know what preparations were taken before the emergency occurred.
Brokers Will Help You Go Broke
When Jeffrey Littman, mild-mannered public adjuster, reads over my policies and says, “I am not an insurance broker, but I wouldn’t have written it this way,” you know you have just lost money. You ought to consult an adjuster before you sign your insurance policy, not after the ruinous incident occurs. Then it’s too late. Adjusters know how these battles are fought and won. They live in the trenches. They are not concerned with selling insurance, they negotiate with insurance companies and collect money. They know which companies pay swiftly and which companies dawdle.
Only You Can Prevent Kitchen Fires
A lesson that has been smoldering for two years finally ignited along with the fire: I am responsible for this restaurant. Not the chef, not the town planning board, not the fire marshal, not the carpenters, not Jesus. Me. I am responsible for the freshness of the fish and the currency of the Web site and the selection of affordable wines. Not managers or attorneys or reviewers or some guidebook to a successful restaurant. Me. I am also responsible for the joy of the guests and the safety of the employees and the combustibility of the walls. The buck not only stops here, it started here, it pauses here for succor and it laughs when it flies out the door, or up the chimney or into the coffers of town hall.
As an owner, nothing is outside your purview. Including the interior of the kitchen walls. I have done just enough research since the fire to realize that the wall behind the four ovens and one fryer was insubstantial — it may have been up to code, well constructed, handsome and properly alarmed, but it combusted. To paraphrase George W. Bush, start a fire in my wall once and you burn me; start a fire twice and I burn myself.
Risking the altogether likely possibility of being permanently branded as arrogant and egotistical — What? Too late? Oh. — I have come to the dispiriting conclusion that I now know as much about preventing fires in my own wall as anyone connected with its reconstruction. Why not? It is my sleep being lost and my energy and my money and my staff. Before the flareup, what I knew about the science of fire could not fill an ashtray: it cooked food, it once destroyed San Francisco, it provided warmth for Neolithic man 9,000 years ago, and Icarus’s wings were inflamed because they were built from the wrong materials.
Surprise lesson: Greek mythology can inform construction.
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