The restaurant insurance mistakes I keep seeing.

Nobody's re-read the package since you opened

Your restaurant package was built for the restaurant you opened — not the one you run now. New equipment, a patio, a bar, delivery, a second location, doubled revenue: every one of those changes what the policy needs to say, and none of them update it automatically. This is the single most common problem I find, and the fix is one review.

The build-out you paid for isn't insured

If you rent your space and paid for the kitchen build-out — the hoods, the walk-in, the dining room you remodeled — those tenant improvements are usually yours to insure, not your landlord's. Owners assume the building's policy covers them because they're bolted to the building. After a fire is a bad time to learn whose policy they were on.

Missing one of the four gaps

Hired & non-owned auto for the employee running to the store, spoilage and contamination (they're two different problems), business income for the weeks the doors are closed, and EPLI for the employment claims any restaurant payroll can generate. I find at least one of these missing in most packages I open — the restaurants page walks through all four.

No cyber, while cards run all night

Every restaurant takes cards; plenty keep customer and employee information too. A breach brings notification costs, cleanup, and sometimes a frozen system in the middle of service. This stopped being a big-company problem years ago, and the coverage is usually cheaper than owners expect.

Overpaying the state fund out of inertia

The state fund is where restaurants start; with a couple of clean years it's often not where they should stay, and nobody tells them. Work comp is the biggest insurance line in most restaurants, which makes this the most expensive form of “we've always done it this way” on this list. Here's the whole story.

Payroll reported loosely, audited painfully

Restaurant payroll moves every month, and tips, overtime, and owner pay each get handled differently at audit time. Loose records hand the auditor the pen. A bookkeeper who keeps payroll clean by category is the difference between an audit that's a formality and an audit that's a bill.

Treating kitchen safety as culture instead of paperwork

Kitchens generate injuries — burns, cuts, floors — and claims feed the multiplier on your work comp price for years. The habits most kitchens already have are worth money when they're documented: training that's logged, incidents reported right away, light-duty comebacks. Same kitchen, better price.

Insurance scattered across agents

The package from one agent, work comp from another, the liquor liability from whoever the distributor recommended — nobody sees the whole stack, so the gaps hide in the seams between agents. One person reading everything is how seams get found — and how the personal side (your home, your cars, your umbrella) stops being an afterthought too.