Restaurant Insurance in Montana

Single-unit upscale modern American, 3,800 sf, 65 seats, $165 average ticket, 32 staff, All Beverages License, premium wine program with a six-figure cellar. Operator came to us at renewal of an existing program from a prior broker. The renewal program carried a property tower bound off the prior dec page across multiple cycles — no one had re-scoped it for the wildfire-WUI smoke-event reality, and it paid on direct fire only. An August Gallatin Valley wildfire twelve miles distant then drove smoke infiltration that contaminated wine inventory, dining-room interiors, and HVAC filtration during Yellowstone-gateway peak week; the standard program declined the smoke-only event for lack of a direct-fire-on-premises trigger.

We re-read the operator profile on video — smoke-event endorsement scoped to off-premises wildfire, scheduled-property coverage on the wine cellar, HVAC filtration replacement scope, lost-income coverage sized to Yellowstone peak-week reality, and a lease-language review for the implied-covenant essential-systems scope. We rebuilt the property program to put the off-premises smoke reality at the center.

Cocktail bar plus small-batch brewery, 2,800 sf, 80 seats plus 16-seat bar, $38 average ticket, 22 staff, All Beverages License, late-hour operation, University-corridor traffic. Operator came to us at lease signing on a new Missoula location. The standard restaurant package the operator was about to bind carried statewide-template liquor liability scoped without the Mont. Code Ann. § 27-1-710 "knew or should have known" defense framework — the generic package treated Montana dram-shop exposure as a non-issue. A patron served during a University football weekend was later ejected and sustained an off-premises injury; the generic-package alternative would have left the dram-shop defense substance unscoped.

We re-read the operator's documentation discipline on video before binding — server-training cadence, ID-verification logs, refusal-of-service incident protocol, and the "knew or should have known" defense substance Montana's framework rewards. We rebuilt the program against the § 27-1-710 framework with the documented-defense substance protected.

Multi-unit fast casual (single of 4 in MT), 1,900 sf, 50 seats, $13 average ticket, 22 staff at peak season, no alcohol, dine-in plus takeout plus third-party delivery. Operator came to us at acquisition — taking over a 4-unit Montana chain from previous ownership. The acquired program from the previous broker carried employee-claim coverage scoped to a generic at-will template across all 4 units — a template the Wrongful Discharge from Employment Act made wrong, since Montana requires good cause to terminate post-probationary employees. A post-probationary kitchen employee terminated at the end of Yellowstone peak season filed a WDEA wrongful-discharge claim, with a concurrent Montana Human Rights Act discrimination claim adding compound exposure.

We re-read the multi-unit operator profile on video — employee-claim coverage scoped to the WDEA good-cause framework, documented termination and probationary-period protocol across all 4 units, and MHRA scope across the cross-trained workforce.