Commercial · industry practice
Restaurants & bars.
QSR, full-service, bars, breweries, food trucks, catering. We place hospitality risk through markets that understand the operation — including the ones that won't blink at a violation history.
What it is.
Restaurants and bars are claim-frequency businesses. Slip-and-fall, food spoilage, equipment breakdown, liquor liability, employment claims — all rolling exposures. The right program is BOP + WC + liquor + equipment breakdown coordinated cleanly. The wrong program leaves you uninsured at the moment a single incident threatens the whole business.
The lines in your policy.
Each one is its own knob. The carrier's default rarely fits a real life.
What a claim looks like.
Three anonymized files. Numbers are illustrative.
Walk-in compressor fails Friday before holiday weekend. Discovery Tuesday — $8K in product, plus 3 days closed for repair. Equipment breakdown + business income paid the spoilage and lost income. Without equipment breakdown, neither would have been covered.
Patron over-served at closing time leaves and causes accident. Liquor liability pays $480K toward settlement plus defense. GL would have excluded. The Missouri dram-shop statute makes this a strict-liability matter for visible intoxication.
Customer slips on freshly mopped floor — no wet-floor sign. ER + ongoing PT + lost wages: $28K. GL portion of BOP pays in full plus $14K defense (outside limit on better policies). Premium does move on renewal.
How to read a restaurants policy.
The four things worth looking for on the dec page, in the order we read them.
The first page tells you who's actually covered, on what address, and under whose legal entity. A surprising number of policies have the wrong name, the wrong address, or a missing additional insured, and you don't find out until you file a claim. Cross-check it against your driver's license, your title or lease, and any contract that requires you to be insured.
Policy limits are abstract until you stack them against the assets they protect. A $300k liability limit feels generous in isolation; against a $1.2M home and a college fund, it isn't. Walk down each numbered line on your dec page and ask: if this were the cap on the worst day, would I be okay?
Page one shows you the base form. Pages four through twelve show you what the endorsements added, and, more importantly, what they took away. Water-damage exclusions, roof-payment schedules, named-storm deductibles, scheduled-valuables caps. These small numbered forms decide more claims than the headline limits do.
Carriers re-rate, re-form, and re-endorse policies at every renewal. If you keep last year's dec page, a side-by-side read takes ten minutes and tells you which limits drifted, which sublimits got cut, and which endorsements quietly disappeared. It's the single most useful habit in personal insurance.
Frequently asked questions.
Doesn't my BOP cover liquor?
No. The standard BOP excludes liquor liability for any business in the liquor business. You need a separate liquor liability policy or endorsement, even on a BOP.
What's the difference between MO and KS dram shop?
Missouri imposes strict liability for service to visibly intoxicated patrons. Kansas requires more proof of negligence. Both states require liquor liability coverage; limits should match the state's exposure profile.
Do I need cyber for a small restaurant?
Yes if you take card payments. PCI exposure is real even at small operations; ransomware can close a restaurant for days. Cyber as an endorsement on a BOP runs $300-$1,200/yr.
Why is hospitality so much more expensive than retail?
Higher claim frequency. Slip-and-fall, employee turnover, equipment failure, food-related claims — hospitality has more moving parts and more daily exposure than most retail. Carriers price accordingly.
Want a second read on your restaurants policy?
Send us your declarations page. You'll get it back marked up, in plain language, with the gaps and the over-coverage flagged, yours to keep, no obligation to switch.
or phone (913) 408-7280
We're an independent broker. We represent you, not the carrier , paid by the carrier we ultimately place with, but accountable only to the person whose name is on the policy. Read more about how we work.