Valley Reporter letter 01/12/2012

People of Vermont: Thank you!

State of Vermont: Thank you!
Our saga with re-opening MINT restaurant in Waitsfield has now come to a new stage. After all the ups and downs, can we’s or can we not’s, how’s and when’s, with the help of a lot of private people and help from the state of Vermont, we re-opened the restaurant on Friday, December 30, 2011.
A flood insurance claim denial letter from FEMA via national flood insurance processing center also arrived, dated December 19. We are very saddened by the way our insurance has been handled. Denial of coverage based on location should have happened when we took out a policy. Every entity we are, insurance-wise, involved with seems to have and hold on to their own truth and this yields no resolution. No one to blame, no one to take responsibility for misleading us with a worthless insurance policy.
We didn’t hide it from Denis, Ricker and Brown, our insurance broker, that we were insuring contents of a restaurant when we took out a flood insurance policy . Yet we are getting the impression that no one gets it. All we hear is talk about a “building policy.” In the flood, we lost all restaurant equipment, electronics, furnishings, food, inventory—stuff that restaurants have.
It was no secret that we weren’t insuring a furnace or walls, floors or electric cables, which are part of building insurance, not content insurance. Yet, these are the only items insurance covers in our specific location. So, nothing we, as a restaurant, lost is covered? No!
At the same time the renewal for flood insurance also arrived. Wouldn’t you be puzzled? We thought that selling ethereal products were the business of New Age bookstores.
Now that the restaurant is open we have to focus our minds and mind our own business which is the business of cooking the healthy food at MINT restaurant. That’s what we love to do.
Open for lunch: Wednesday through Sunday, 11:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. Open for dinner: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Thank you, everybody! We don’t know all your names, but we’ll personally thank you when we see you.

Savitri Deskov, MINT
Waitsfield