Hospitality Insurance For Restaurants, Bars, & Cafes In Australia

While a café, bar, or other hospitality venue might seem like a safer environment than a busy warehouse, there are still several risks associated with these businesses. For example, wet floors, broken glass and burns from hot food and beverages are all very real and very dangerous potential hazards common to the hospitality industry.

What are some of the risks of running a restaurant, bar, or café?

As a small business owner, you take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of your customers, suppliers, community and their property. For example, a customer slipping on a wet floor or burning themselves with your product could be grounds for a lawsuit, potentially costing you many thousands in damages and as well as legal fees.

While it’s always a good idea to do all you can to minimise risks in your business, accidents can happen. Business Insurance* is an insurance package designed to help provide cover for your business contents, stock, tools and commercial premises when an insured event occurs (such as fire, storm, theft or even accidental damage). A Business Insurance package can also help cover your portable equipment, glass and for loss of revenue due to business interruption in specified circumstances. In addition, cover is available for public liability, tax audit, employment practices and statutory liability risks.

Public liability insurance for hospitality businesses

Public liability insurance is an insurance product which can be relevant to hospitality businesses.

Public liability insurance* is designed to help provide protection for you and your business in the event that a customer, supplier or a member of the public are injured or sustain property damage as a result of negligent business activities¹. Any of the incidents mentioned earlier – from someone slipping on a wet floor to dropping a glass that results in someone cutting themselves – could be considered as having occurred due to your negligence, potentially opening you up to an expensive claim for damages.

Public liability insurance not only can help provide cover for compensation payable to an injured person, it can also help provide coverage for legal and defence costs associated with a covered claim. Fighting these matters in court can be costly even if you win. Some cover of legal and defence costs allows your business to proceed as much as possible as usual, without worrying about cash-flow being affected.

How much does public liability insurance cost for restaurants, bars, and cafes?

There are a variety of factors which can affect your public liability insurance premiums.

Your premiums can depend on how risky your business is perceived to be and how much coverage you are taking out. A business assessed as low risk by an insurer and that is taking out $5 million in coverage could pay lower premiums than one assessed as higher risk that takes out $20 million in coverage.

Compare hospitality insurance with iSelect & BizCover^

At iSelect we’ve partnered with BizCover to make it easy for you to compare business insurance products on offer from a range of providers. Get started today or call us on 13 19 20.

*As with any insurance, cover will be subject to the terms, conditions and exclusions contained in the policy wording. The information provided in this article is general only and should not be relied upon as advice.

Sources:
1. https://www.business.gov.au/risk-management/insurance/liability-insurance-and-professional-indemnity