Like any business, insurance is a part of the planning process. For breweries they have specialized insurance needs and therefore cannot go with a simple business insurance policy. Below is a short list of the top insurance policies or coverages a brewery should be aware of.
- Business Liability or General Liability is liability coverage for bodily injury or property damage to others, as well as the legal costs associated with these damages.
- Business Property is coverage for property owned by the business, like buildings and product. You can add coverage for loss to business income should you be unable to continue business after a covered claim.
- Business Auto if the brewery owns vehicles and/or rents/borrows vehicles for business purposes, like transportation of product or trips to the bank.
- Workers Compensation for bodily injury to employees of the brewery.
- Product Liability for the recall of contaminated products, foreign objects or exploding cans.
- Cyber Insurance – if you use any technology you are at risk of a cyber attack. According to Coalition cyber attacks on small businesses is on the rise and 42% of cyber attacks occur from phishing attempts, like phishing emails to your employees.
- Employment Practices – if you employ staff you can potentially be sued for wrongful termination, sexual harassment, breach of employment contract, etc.
- Equipment Breakdown Insurance – as a brewery you rely on your equipment each day. If for some reason your equipment stops working one day you may need to consider equipment breakdown coverage to get you back to brewing.
- Inland & Marine Insurance for the protection of your product will being transported to another location.
- Liquor Liability – as a brewery you sell, serve, and distribute alcohol to your patrons. This is coverage for your brewery should a patron become intoxicated and assault another patron or has an accident while driving home.
- Umbrella Insurance depending on the severity of the event you may not have enough liability coverage in your business insurance policies and need additional liability coverage to settle a catastrophic event.
- Flood Insurance – every building has a flood risk, some low risk, some high risk. If there is any potential for a flood risk you should consider flood insurance.
In the beginning not all of these policies may be necessary. However, as a brewery grows the risk for a loss increases. While this is a short list of insurance policies and coverages, it is by no means the end all be all for insurance breweries. Your specific brewery insurance needs should be discussed with an Insurance Advisor, so a customize insurance program can be created to meet your breweries needs.