BusinessReport.com

Kyle Beck is a tad partial to electricity. His office is adjacent to 6,000 square feet of storage space, all climate-controlled.

Beck is the owner of Ready Portion Meat Company, a Baton Rouge wholesale distributor to restaurants, hotels, hospitals and other institutions within a 100-mile radius.

Eleven compressors keep storage units at the company’s Choctaw Drive warehouse at its necessary temperatures. Meat kept for aging is cooled to between 32 degrees and 35 degrees, freezer units get down to minus-5 degrees, and a flash freezer reaches minus-25 degrees.

Now Beck is facing the arrival of what is expected to be a busier-than-normal hurricane season, which has already seen the arrival of its first named storm. Beck is fortunate in that the company has never had a power outage that lasted more than two days. Nevertheless, the company has safety measures in place to protect itself against worst-case scenarios.

The freezer walls are thick enough—about two feet—that closing the doors during a power outage will keep the product frozen for four days. Workers enter the freezer only once during the outage to get the necessary product onto trucks, maintaining the company’s usual business operations.

For an extended outage, product can be loaded into the company’s refrigerated trucks and moved to other locations. Another option is using a mobile refrigeration unit provided by a Houston company, which pipes coolants through Ready Portion’s system and can get the storage units as cold as zero degrees. “That’s a pretty expensive proposition,” Beck says.

Aside from the expense standpoint, there’s another problem. Any sort of storm that would leave the company powerless for extended amounts of time also stands at least a reasonable chance of causing problems with transportation. So Beck keeps his entire inventory insured just in case he loses any product. He also carries “pretty heavy” business interruption insurance. This sort of preparation leaves little chance for Beck and his company to be debilitated by a storm.

Is your business this prepared? Here are some ways to get ready for the next few months:

Getting insured

Even if you do everything you can to hurricane-proof your business, it’s important to make sure you have the necessary insurance in place by getting a business owners policy.

The primary function of a BOP is to cover the building and the contents owned by the company. Flood insurance must be purchased separately through the National Flood Insurance program.

One of the aspects of a business owners policy that was brought to light following Hurricane Katrina was business interruption insurance. This covers the loss of income that results from a disaster disrupting the operation of the business.

It is important to have enough business interruption insurance. According the to the Washington, D.C.-based Insurance Information Institute, many business owners underestimate the time it will take to recover from a disaster and are not adequately covered.

An addition to business interruption insurance is extra expense insurance, which covers the added expenses of a business operating out of a temporary location. “Businesses that recover quickly are the ones that plan in advance,” says Loretta Worters, vice president of the Insurance Information Institute.

For details on business insurance, visit iii.org/individuals/business.