Restaurant Insurance in Ohio

Single-unit upscale modern American, 3,800 sf, 85 seats, $155 average ticket, 34 staff, D-5 with D-3A late-hour permit, premium wine and craft cocktail program. Operator came to us at renewal of an existing program from a prior broker. The renewal program carried the Bureau coverage and stopped there — no Employer's Liability stop-gap layer — bound off the prior dec page across multiple cycles without anyone re-scoping it. The operator was also not enrolled in the Bureau's group-rating or drug-free-workplace discount programs. A compound HVAC and sprinkler-system failure on the historic-structure substrate during an OSU football weekend then drove a property and lost-income claim, and a workplace-injury event surfaced a third-party-over exposure the program had no stop-gap to answer.

We re-read the operator profile on video — the Employer's Liability stop-gap layer behind the Bureau coverage, Bureau discount-program enrollment, equipment-breakdown scope against the historic substrate, and lost-income coverage sized to actual repair-timeline reality. We rebuilt the program to put the stop-gap layer and the discount-program enrollment at the center.

Cocktail bar plus small plates, 2,800 sf, 75 seats plus 18-seat bar, $42 average ticket, 22 staff, D-5 with D-3A late-hour permit, full bar program. Operator came to us at lease signing on a new East 4th Street location. The standard restaurant package the operator was about to bind carried statewide-template liquor liability scoped without the Ohio Rev. Code § 4399.18 "knowingly furnished" defense framework — the generic package treated Ohio dram-shop exposure as a non-issue. A patron served during a game-day late-hours window was later involved in an off-premises incident; 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 protocol, transaction-log retention, refusal-of-service incident logs, and the late-hour D-3A permit posture. We rebuilt the program against the § 4399.18 framework with the documented-defense substance protected.

Multi-unit fast casual (single of 5 in OH), 2,100 sf, 60 seats, $14 average ticket, 18 staff, no alcohol, dine-in plus takeout plus third-party delivery. Operator came to us at acquisition — taking over a 5-unit Ohio chain from previous ownership. The acquired program from the previous broker carried employee-claim coverage scoped to the federal 15-employee Title VII floor — a scope that left smaller-headcount units exposed, since the Ohio Civil Rights Act applies at 4 employees. A slip-and-fall in the customer area drove a premises-liability claim, and a concurrent discrimination claim surfaced from a former employee at one of the smaller units.

We re-read the multi-unit operator profile on video — premises liability against Ohio's open-and-obvious doctrine and § 2315.33 comparative fault, inspection-record discipline across all 5 units, and employee-claim coverage scoped to the Ohio Civil Rights Act 4-employee threshold rather than the federal floor.