Ponsford Insurance
Lee Carpenter runs Winston´s in Weston Super Mare, Somerset, situated on the sea-front opposite the Tourist Information centre, and just five minutes from the pier, this 90 seater fish restaurant is the largest of all the fish restaurants in the town. And it is generally thought to be the best, with awards for cleanliness and service.
In Easter 2007, Lee was expecting a good start to his busy season, when disaster struck. At 11 am on Easter Sunday, when his staff were getting ready for the lunch trade, one of the frying ´pans´ within the range caught fire spreading also to the whole frying range itself. The fire quickly spread to the other parts of the restaurant and by the time Lee got there from his home - just 5 minutes away - the place was full of oily black smoke.
“The Fire Brigade wanted me to show them where to switch off the electricity, but the smoke was too thick to see anything and they had to grope their way around to find the consumer unit with the switches.’ The smoke left oily deposits on all the surfaces, which meant a major redecorating effort, but the fire had also got into the ducting under the floors, so they had to be dug up and the ducting pulled out and replaced.
Only one of the five fridges had to be replaced, but Lee threw away everything in all the fridges and all the other food - “I´m very proud of our reputation for cleanliness and health, and I didn´t want to keep anything that might have been contaminated. And of course the whole fryer unit had to be replaced. Luckily the tables and chairs in the restaurant could be cleaned, so we didn´t have to replace those.“
Lee´s first thought when he arrived on the scene was for his staff, but once he found that no-one had been hurt, he realised what the fire was going to do to his business. “Easter is the start of the busy season and the weather in 2007 was particularly good. People come to Weston from all over, but mainly from Wales and the Midlands. They come for day-trips and weekends as well as for one or two weeks and because the weather was so good there were more people than usual in Weston for late March. It turned out to be the best Easter, weather wise since 1970 - we thought it was going to set us up for a really good season. As it was, we didn´t open again for eight weeks - but I know it would have taken longer if it hadn´t been for our brokers R F Ponsford Insurance Services. The staff were super, got there within hours of my phoning and got the paperwork going straight away. R F Ponsford Insurance Services held our hand the whole way through the process, and got us a really good Loss Adjuster (Mike Potter of Davies & Co), they all did a super job.”
“We thought we´d have to wait until the whole claim was settled before we got any money. That would have meant we lost the whole season but R F Ponsford Insurance Services got us a very large interim payment within the first couple of weeks, so we were able to put down a deposit and get the new equipment ordered immediately. We were up and running again by June, some 10 weeks later and following on from this we did some advertising to let everyone know we were open again, and now business is back to normal.”
“I am really glad we decided to insure through R F Ponsford Insurance Services - I don´t think anyone else would have looked after us so well and got us a really professional Loss Adjuster (Mike Potter of Davis & Co), they all did a super job”
Lee Carpenter,
Winstons Fish and Chip Restaurant