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Staying open for Hurricane Sandy

Businesses in the path of Hurricane Sandy are preparing for anything but business-as-usual — for some shops storms are good for business.

The first rains from Hurricane Sandy prompted a little last minute shopping last night at Milk and Honey Market, a neighborhood grocery store and café in Philadelphia, three years ago.

“Storms are excellent for business,” says store-owner Mauro Daigle. Daigle and his wife, Annie Baum-Stein, say bad weather tends to drive up sales: “We see people buy us out of all the staples. Ground beef…milk and eggs, and all bread.”

They think they’re ok, unless Sandy kills the power for several days. “We would be in a sort of lot of trouble. We could, potentially lose like $20,000 worth of lost product,” says Daigle.

If that happens, they might not be able to fully restock. “Customers would be turned off because there wouldn’t be product for them to buy…thanks for bringing it up,” says Daigle, and his wife agrees, “that’s the worst case scenario for sure,” says Baum-Stein.

So Daigle spent part of the weekend talking to his insurance agent. “Our spoilage coverage is like$2500. It really needs to be like $25,000 for us to be protected,” he says.

Daigle says he can’t change policies during the storm, but he’s got a meeting set up Wednesday.

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