Restaurant insurance
Most restaurants need five coverages: for customers who get hurt or sick, for the kitchen and build-out, for staff injuries, for alcohol if you serve any, and for the income lost while closed after a fire. An umbrella goes on top when a lease or franchise asks for higher limits. How much of each depends on your alcohol share, payroll, number of locations and what your lease demands.
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Who we work with — and who we don't
We work with
We write established restaurants — take-out, fast casual, fine dining, buffets, catering, ghost kitchens, and franchise locations — and multi-unit operators are our best fit. Restaurants are our bread and butter: we used to run them ourselves.
We're not the right fit for
A brand-new restaurant that hasn’t opened yet isn’t a fit.
Restaurants insurance questions
Related deep-dives
Which coverages does a restaurant typically carry?
Five, in roughly this order of importance: liability for customers, property for the kitchen and build-out, workers' comp, liquor liability if you serve alcohol, and coverage for lost income while you are closed. The sixth card, an umbrella, goes on top when a lease or franchise asks for more.
General Liability
Pays when a customer slips on a wet floor, is burned by a hot plate, gets sick from a meal or is hurt on your patio, and sues. Your lease sets the minimum limit; a group with several locations usually shares one yearly total across all of them.
Commercial Property
Rebuilds the kitchen, the dining room build-out, the walk-ins, the hood and the point-of-sale system after a fire or water loss. The hood's fire-suppression system is usually a condition of this coverage: keep its inspection tag current.
Workers' Compensation
Cuts, burns, slips and strains are the everyday injuries of a kitchen, and for most restaurants this is the largest single premium. It is priced on payroll by job (customer tips are usually left out) and trued up at an audit after the year ends.
Liquor Liability
The standard liability policy does not pay when a customer you served drinks to hurts someone. If you serve alcohol at all, this is a separate policy, and the share of sales that is alcohol is the first thing an underwriter asks about.
Business Interruption
Replaces the income you lose and keeps paying rent and key staff while a covered loss has the doors closed. A restaurant cannot make up a dark week later, so the limit should reflect each location's real revenue, not an average.
Umbrella & Excess Liability
Adds a layer above your liability, liquor and auto limits when a landlord, franchisor or lender wants more than the first policy carries. For a group with several locations and a bar at each, the extra layer is usually the cheapest million you buy.
Frequently asked questions about restaurant insurance
Before you sign. Most restaurant leases make proof of insurance a condition of handing over the keys, and the build-out, the equipment deliveries and the first hires all happen before opening day. Get the quote while you are negotiating the lease so the insurance clause can be matched before it is signed.
Tell your agent before it starts. Each of those changes the risk the carrier priced: alcohol needs its own liquor liability policy, catering moves your liability off the premises, and delivery with staff cars needs hired and non-owned auto coverage. A carrier learns about an undisclosed operation at claim time, and that is the worst moment to find out it is excluded.
Yes. One incident does not make a restaurant uninsurable. Some standard carriers will decline, and the account moves to a restaurant program or the surplus-lines market, usually at a higher price for a year or two. What matters is the correction: the new suppression tag, the retraining, the documented fix, presented honestly with the loss history.
Bind the new policy first, then cancel the old one effective the same date. Ask the new agent for the binder in writing, send the new certificates to your landlord and franchisor, and check whether the old policy carries a minimum earned premium before you cancel it mid-term.
Send us the lease, the menu and the alcohol share. We'll build the program around them.
Tell us what you run, where, and what your landlord or franchisor is asking for. We'll come back with the coverages that fit and the markets that actually write restaurants like yours.