Restaurant Insurance

Restaurant insurance is customized coverage designed to help protect food service businesses from financial losses caused by accidents, lawsuits, property damage, employee injuries, food-related claims and other unexpected challenges. Whether you own a restaurant, café, diner, food truck or catering business, insurance can help protect your operations and livelihood. Some examples of this type of business are: 

• Full-service restaurants

• Fast-casual restaurants

• Fast food restaurants

• Cafes and coffee shops

• Diners

• Delis

• Catering businesses

• Pizzerias

• Buffets

• Food trucks

Running your restaurant comes with unique risks that require a combination of insurance coverages to help protect against liability claims, property losses, employee injuries and operational disruptions. Examples may include: 

• General liability insurance - Liability insurance helps provide coverage for bodily injury and property damage to others, as well as legal defense in the event that someone takes you to court. Without it, you would be responsible for paying for negligent acts and legal defense out-of-pocket.
• Business Owners Policy (BOP) - This policy combines general liability and commercial property coverage into a single package to save you money. It can cover everything vital to the operation of your business—your brick-and-mortar location, inventory, shelving and more. 
• Business Income - Website – Protection against loss of income if the business closes due to direct physical loss of or physical damage to your website operation at the premises of a vendor acting as your service provider.
• Food Contamination – Provides coverage for certain expenses and business income losses sustained because of the described premises being ordered closed by the Board of Health or other governmental authority as a result of the discovery or suspicion of food contamination.
• Refrigeration Breakdown Expense - Vehicles – Coverage for expenses incurred to avoid spoilage due to a refrigeration breakdown of equipment on vehicles owned or leased.
• Spoilage – Coverage for loss of your perishable stock due to a mechanical breakdown or power outage.
• Liquor Liability – May protect against expenses if a customer gets injured as a result of you selling, serving or providing alcoholic beverages.

Additional insurance restaurants may need

• Business umbrella coverage - This coverage protects your business if and when you reach the limit on your liability insurance. Umbrella covers you for large or unexpected claims, which are potentially devastating. That way, one bad day won’t undo years of your work.  
• Workers compensation - Accidents happen at restaurants all the time. Employees could slip and fall, injure themselves or a variety of other things, and that could mean medical expenses and lost wages. Workers’ comp insurance covers those expenses, so business doesn’t stop because of a bad moment. In many states, it’s also legally required coverage.
• Data breach coverage - Hackers leave no stone unturned trying to find sensitive financial information. If your customers were ever exposed, you’d be on the hook for things like data recovery, credit monitoring, maybe even PR or crisis management costs. That’s why data breach coverage is so important. You’ll stay up and running with $10,000 automatically and an option to increase up to $250,000 in coverage.

At COUNTRY Financial, we help you customize your restaurant insurance with broad general coverage and specific add-ons unique to you, so the cost can vary. Factors that affect your insurance costs include: 

• The size of your business
• Coverages and limits you select
• Your claims history
• Number of employees
• Property you own