Society Insurance Guide Urges Restaurants to Build Emergency
Ahead of National Preparedness Month, Society Insurance publishes a guide for restaurants on creating emergency plans.
Society Insurance has issued a comprehensive guide for restaurant and bar owners on building an emergency preparedness plan. The guide, released ahead of September's National Preparedness Month, stresses that an estimated 75 percent of small businesses are underinsured, making a formal plan essential.
An effective plan must address four distinct phases: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Each phase involves specific actions to reduce operational risk and potential income loss.
Mitigation: Identifying Vulnerabilities
Mitigation is the foundational step. Here, owners must identify their business's greatest internal and external vulnerabilities. Common threats include fires, tornadoes, and floods. The goal is to find ways to prevent emergencies or lessen the damage if they occur. Securing appropriate insurance coverages with correct policy limits is a critical mitigation strategy for financial protection.
Preparedness: Planning Before Disaster Strikes
This phase involves making concrete preparations to save lives and protect property before any emergency happens. Society Insurance provides a detailed checklist of questions owners should answer while developing their plan.
Key considerations include emergency lighting for safe evacuation, plans to prevent food spoilage during power outages, and reliable data backup for key files. The insurer notes that fires are a leading disaster for the industry, making kitchen maintenance a top priority.
Owners are asked to confirm several fire prevention measures are in place. These include semi annual professional cleaning of hoods and ducts, servicing the Automatic Extinguishing System (AES) every six months, and weekly cleaning of baffle filters and deep fryer cabinets. Greasy rags should be stored in a lidded, non combustible container to prevent spontaneous combustion.
Response: Acting During an Emergency
The response phase covers actions taken to save lives and prevent further damage once a disaster occurs. Immediately notifying police and fire departments is most important. Employee training is critical here. New staff should learn the emergency plan during orientation, while all employees must review it annually. Team drills are recommended.
For kitchen fires specifically, every employee must know the location of the AES emergency pull station above the cooking line. Society Insurance states, "They should know to pull this device whenever there is a fire on the cooking line." If owners expect staff to use fire extinguishers on early stage fires, OSHA standards require annual training on their proper use.
Recovery: Returning to Normal Operations
Recovery, the final phase, involves actions to return to normal or safer conditions after an emergency. Owners should notify their insurance company as soon as they are aware of a disaster. Securing the site to prevent further damage and contacting a disaster recovery contractor are also key steps.
The guide concludes by envisioning a worst case scenario: a pre dawn call from an alarm company about a break in or power failure. Having a plan in place allows a business to react swiftly, minimizing the emergency's impact. This can save time, money, and potentially lives.
