Insurance for Restaurants & Cafes

  • Trusted by over 220,000 small businesses
  • Choose from a range of covers, including Glass and Machinery Breakdown
  • Competitive Prices with our Price Promise

Compare quotes from our trusted insurance partners*:

Business insurance for restaurants and cafes covers things like accidental injury or damage to a member of the public, protecting your valuable business assets and other vital areas that keep your business running.

Why do Restaurants & Cafes need Insurance?

Whether you’re serving up the best chai lattes or pizzas in town, business insurance is something every restaurant and café owner needs to consider. Your food business interacts with people every day from customers to suppliers, creating the potential opportunity for unwanted accidents to occur.

With the appropriate types of business insurance in place, you are not only being a responsible food business owner, but you are helping to safeguard your restaurant or café from the financial and reputational damage a claim can cause.

Take a minute to sit back, relax and look at our menu of insurance options for your business. What’s more, you don’t need to shop around to find the best cover solutions. With BizCover, you’ll get multiple competitive quotes from leading insurers within minutes.

Did you know?

Public Liability Insurance: The average level of cover our customers take for their restaurant and cafe business is 10 million dollars.

Insurance for Restaurants & Cafes

Public Liability Insurance

There is no end to the list of possible accidents that could happen in the restaurant environment, and you need to protect your business from any potential claims. These could arise from a waiter dropping hot food on a customer, to a customer slipping on a melted ice-block on the floor, or a supplier tripping on the plastic mat in the prep area, and even unthinkable issues like broken teeth being found in food (true story). Yuck!

Food poisoning is also a huge risk for restaurants and cafes – imagine the risk to brand reputation and impact on trading from a food poisoning incident – a dodgy piece of fish or a bout of salmonella could turn your cash cow into curdled milk!

What is typically included?

Compensation for:

  • personal injury suffered by a third party (e.g., a customer, supplier, or member of the public)
  • damage to property owned by a third party due to your negligent business activities
  • legal and defence costs associated with a covered

 

What is typically not covered?

  • Injuries to your employees
  • Damage to your own property
  • Costs of rectifying faulty workmanship
  • Professional negligence
  • Contractual liability
  • Events occurring before or after the policy

Business Insurance

Even though you can’t insure the ambience you have created in your restaurant, you can insure the building and all its contents:

  • Building – if you own the building you will want to be able to rebuild or restore quickly. Water damage (pipes burst) or fire (in the kitchen) is a high risk area.
  • Contentsprotection for damage to your chairs, tables and other fittings.
  • Machinery breakdown – if you depend on your fridges to keep food fresh you will want to ensure you have cover for them. You can even get an extension to cover loss of stock – so if your fridge motor burnt out and your food was spoiled you can include the cost of these items in your claim.
  • Business interruption – continuity is important in a restaurant. What happens if there are major power outages? Not just immediate impact of days of trading but also potential loss of custom from customers who don’t return.
Hrair from NSW save $450 on Business Insurance Pack
Pongpanot, a restaurant owner from SA saved $250 on Business Insurance Pack

Management Liability

If you have employees in your restaurant, you’ll need to cover all your (pizza) bases!

  • Ensuring fair treatment in all areas of business is important e.g. protection against bullying and harassment, discrimination and unfair dismissal, EPA Fines.
  • OH&S is also an important part of running a restaurant – management liability provides cover for this.
  • Correct disposal of waste and garbage is important for small businesses and like all restaurants you will be dealing with grease – if a team member inadvertently disposed of this incorrectly you could be fined.
  • While we like to think of all employees as good people, theft in small business is commonplace. Management liability protects against such instances.

Tax Audit

As a restaurant owner you have enough to keep you busy day and night. Take the stress out of an ATO investigation with this insurance.

Cyber Insurance*

As a restaurant owner your exposure could be at the payment desk – with your eftpos machine hacked.

How much does Restaurant and Cafe Insurance cost?

No matter if you are a takeaway food business or a fine dining restaurant, no two food businesses are the same. That’s why there isn’t a stock-standard price of business insurance for restaurants and cafes. When calculating the price of your policy, there are a variety of factors which are taken into consideration.

Some of these may include:

  • The size of your business
  • How many staff you have?
  • The type of food business you are running
  • The type of coverage you take out
  • Your excess
  • The level of cover
  • Your claims history
  • Location of your business

Why choose BizCover for your restaurant and cafe insurance?

Australia's No.1 business insurance

Australia’s No.1 online insurance business

The trophy cabinet is filling up, but we take more pride in the 220,000 small businesses we have helped already… and counting.

BizCover - Clear and Competitive Pricing

Clear and competitive pricing

You can compare and choose from a range of competitive prices right there on your screen. Seriously.

BizCover - Built for Small Businesses

Built for small business

We know insurance and what makes small businesses tick.

BizCover - Real People

We won’t bore you with jargon

We’re not fans of complicated insurance speak, so we talk to you in plain English.

Claim Examples

Could this happen to your business?

Something fishy

A busy restaurant in the city had an off day and served some fish that wasn’t quite right. It resulted in five of their loyal customers being poisoned and becoming violently ill! They were each paid out $20,000 for their medical treatment and damages.

Power cut palaver

A pro-longed power outage whilst the shop was shut caused the stock of a local fish and chips shop to be ruined (including food, ice creams and drinks). The clients claim was settled for $2,373. Less the $500 discount, the client received $1,873.

Wild Forage

Watch BizCover customer, Nick Black, an entrepreneurial chef with qualifications in environmental science who is harvesting nature’s bounty and supplying restaurants in South East Queensland.

Frequently Asked Questions

To understand the types of business insurance products that can help reduce the risks to your restaurant or cafe business, you first need to identify your risk weak spots.

Public Liability insurance and Product Liability insurance are a great place to start when looking for business insurance for your restaurant or cafe business. Other types of business insurance you may consider include ContentsBuildingTax Audit and Cyber Liability insurance. Choose BizCover to compare competitive quotes and save on your business insurance.

Some of the factors that you need to think about when calculating what level of Public Liability insurance your food business needs include things like:

  • Is there a minimum level of cover that may be required in a contract or in your rental agreement from your landlord?
  • If your business is growing fast, you may want to make sure your level of cover is reviewed regularly

Customer Reviews

Rated 4.6/5 for Customer Experience

Prefer to talk?

Call us and talk to a real person.
Friendly, helpful service from a business insurance professional.

1300 249 268

Mon-Fri 8.30am-7.00pm
Sat 9.00am-5.00pm

* This information is a general guide only and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs.  As with any insurance, cover will be subject to the terms, conditions and exclusions contained in the policy wording. The information contained on this web page is general only and should not be relied upon as advice.
*Savings made on 24/11/2022 on Business Insurance Pack policy. This information is provided as a guide only and may not reflect pricing for your particular business, as individual underwriting criteria will apply. ©2023 BizCover Pty Limited, All rights reserved. ABN 68 127 707 975; AFSL 501 769

Popular Searches