Restaurant Insurance discounts and questions
A package built around what goes wrong in a kitchen and a dining room: fire and equipment breakdown, a guest who slips or gets sick, a walk-in that fails overnight, and the bar's liquor exposure. Priced on sales, seating, cooking method, hours and whether alcohol is served.
Discounts carriers commonly offer
- Automatic fire suppression and hood cleaning contract
- A serviced suppression system and a documented cleaning schedule; most carriers require these before quoting a cooking restaurant at all.
- Certified server training
- Staff who complete a recognised responsible-service course, which reduces the liquor liability rate with many carriers.
- Package policy
- Property, liability, liquor and business income written together with one carrier rather than as separate monoline policies.
- Security and monitoring
- A monitored burglar alarm and cameras at the register and the back door.
- Claims-free and years in business
- A loss history without liability or fire claims and an established operating record.
Questions people ask
My landlord's lease asks to be an additional insured with a specific limit. What do I do?
Send us the insurance clause of the lease. The landlord is added by endorsement to the liability policy, the limit is raised if needed or an umbrella is added above it, and the certificate is issued to them showing exactly what the lease asks for. Leases also often require you to insure the building's glass and the tenant improvements even where the landlord owns them, which changes the property limit.
We only serve beer and wine. Do we still need liquor liability?
Yes, if any alcohol is sold or served. The general liability exclusion does not distinguish beer from spirits, and the liquor licensing authority does not either. The premium reflects the share of alcohol in your sales, so a restaurant where wine is a small part of the bill pays much less than a bar, but the coverage is the same.
What happens if the power goes out and we lose the walk-in?
Spoilage coverage pays for the inventory if the endorsement is on the policy, up to its limit, whether the cause was an outage or a compressor failure. Lost sales during the outage are a utility interruption claim, which has a waiting period and is only sometimes included. Suppose a summer storm knocks out power for a day and a half and the walk-in holds four thousand dollars of product; the spoilage limit pays the product, and the income for the closed day depends on whether utility interruption was bought and how long its waiting period is.
Does the policy cover a health-department closure?
Not on the standard form. Business income requires physical damage from a covered cause. A closure order after an inspection, or a contaminated product recall with no fire or water event, is covered only by a food contamination endorsement, which some carriers offer with its own limit for cleaning, restocking, lost income and advertising to reopen.
How is the premium audited at the end of the year?
Liability and liquor premiums are charged on estimated sales and trued up against your actual figures at renewal or audit, and workers compensation is trued up on payroll. Reporting sales and alcohol share honestly at the start avoids an audit bill, and undeclared alcohol sales can be treated as a misrepresentation at claim time rather than just a billing adjustment.