Everybody needs to eat, so you’d think running a restaurant would be an easy money-making career.
While we wait for the experienced chefs and restaurant owners to pick themselves off the floor, it may be a good idea to have a look at our kitchen and front of house pain points and how to fix them.
The reality can come as a shock if you’ve never worked in the service industry.
Long, long working hours, a pace that veers between dead-slow and frantically busy, and all the legal requirements you need in place have made more than one restaurateur turn grey.
Your three best friends in a restaurant are going to be named Organisation, Delegation, and Insurance.
While organisation and delegation seem obvious, insurance is always a bit of a blurry area, especially for first-time owners.
Let’s break it down like we’re creating a new dish, shall we?
The Main Element:
Employer’s liability insurance is a must have. This is the core of your dish. You can’t serve anything else without it.
Employer’s liability insurance is a legal requirement in the UK and needs to be in place as soon as you become an employer.
In a busy restaurant, workplace injuries can and will happen.
There isn’t a chef on the planet that hasn’t cut and burnt themselves, but there’s a big difference between a finger slice that needs a blue plaster, and one that needs a visit to A&E and a bunch of stitches – and probably time off to heal.
In front of house, spills, slips, trips and falls can all happen faster than you can blink. Doing the splits in a packed restaurant while carrying hot food out is nobody’s idea of fun.
While a responsible business owner will mitigate the risks through training and hygiene standards, a workplace where heat, liquids, hard floors and sharp objects are all part of the working environment means it’s impossible to prevent every injury.
The penalties for non-compliance can put a restaurant out of business in a hurry; fines can come in at an eye-watering £2500 per day, and you can be fined £1000 if you either don’t display your certificate or provide it to inspectors when asked for it.
It covers your team for illness or injury caused by working for you and is currently the only mandatory insurance you’ll have to worry about.
The Complementary Element:
Public liability insurance is going to be an important item on your plate.
This covers you if a member of the public gets hurt on your premises or gets sick from food that was served to them.
It’s not a legal requirement, but if you end up in court because a server didn’t tell the kitchen Uncle Joe was allergic to peanuts, you’re going to want it to cover your legal costs.
The Tasty Side:
Building contents insurance can cover you for everything from stock being stolen in a break-in to cash that’s held on-site.
It’s not mandatory, but if you ever open your shutters to find a cleaned-out husk instead of your fittings and furnishings, you’re going to be very happy you have it.
An Excellent Sauce
The Covid shutdown devastated the food industry world-wide. Margins in a restaurant are often razor thin, and being forced to close for months on end meant too many great places never re-opened.
Some of the lucky ones had business interruption insurance.
Business interruption insurance will help to cover the income lost if you need to stop trading for a while. Just be aware that it will not cover something already happening, meaning you probably can’t take out a new policy that will cover you for future Covid shutdowns.
An Optional Palette Cleanser
If you’re lucky enough to own the building your restaurant is housed in, you’ll want to get Buildings Insurance.
This covers the cost of repairs to your building, or even rebuilding in the worst-case scenario, like someone missing a curve and driving through your front window.
If you rent instead, this will be covered by your landlord.
Your dish is complete, and ready to serve. Bon Appetite!