A major objective for any successful restaurant owner is to offer flavorful dishes made up of quality ingredients. Most are not experts in business insurance, but would do well to follow the same objective regarding the ingredients included on their NY restaurant insurance coverage.
There are three vital restaurant Business Owner Policy ingredients necessary to serve up a delicious plate of insurance coverage protections; General Liability, Business Property, and Business Interruption Coverage.
Restaurant General Liability Protection
Today we are served up a rather healthy portion of personal injury attorney television commercials, radio spots, billboards, and print ads alerting the public as to the no-cost easy way to cash in on a slip and fall injury. Personal injury lawsuits are prevalent in our society and busy high-traffic eating establishments present a risk for accidental injury.
General liability coverage protects a restaurant owner from these unanticipated and often big dollar lawsuits. Going uncovered or carrying inadequate liability limits places the owner at extreme financial risk.
It protects you for a claim settlement or court judgment. Say for instance a customer slips and falls on a wet floor in your restaurant, is injured and sues you for $750,000. If you’re not covered or only have $300,000 liability coverage, you are in a tough spot. If you carry a $1 million liability limit, you are protected and can breathe much easier.
General liability coverage also provides a legal defense for the business owner, especially beneficial for frivolous or fraudulent claims. For example, say a man intentionally trips himself in your establishment and either fakes or over embellishes an injury, later suing you for $1 million. Without coverage, you would either have to settle with the claimant for an extreme amount of money or hire your own attorney to defend for a cost at up to tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket.
Business Property Protection for Restaurant Owners.
Besides liability protection, a business owner policy also covers business property, like your physical building structure (if you own) and everything you own to run your restaurant, including equipment, supplies, seating units and food/wine inventory.
Business owner policies protect property for covered perils, common ones being fire, lightning, wind, theft, burst pipes, explosions, vandalism, and falling objects. You should discuss included peril coverage on your policy with your agent to make sure your protection is adequate, especially for things that can and do happen in restaurants that cause damage to property.
Protection for Business Interruption
If your restaurant has to be shut down because of a covered peril such as a fire, Business Interruption Coverage will help you to recover your lost income during the shutdown period.
Say for instance your restaurant experiences a kitchen fire and has to be shut down for 3 months for cleanup, repairs, and equipment replacement. Your business interruption coverage would pay for the lost income you missed out on, but would have normally received during that 3-month timespan.
As you can see, having these three important coverage ingredients included in your restaurant business owner policy provides you a flavorful entrée of protection, not for your palette, but for your peace of mind.