From the Front Lines: Restaurants

Why restaurants?

I was born into food. I say that with a smile. My family has been in food for more than 80 years, from the restaurant industry to the grocery industry to meat brokerage industry. I worked in the hospitality industry hands-on for about 25 years. I had a conversation with my family about wanting to open a restaurant, and my dad said, “Get into insurance.” He transitioned about five years earlier and was making good money.

I got licensed, did home and auto, and hated it. It was nothing like I was used to. I like interactive and high energy. I learned you could get into commercial, and from there I learned you could specialize.

Biggest restaurant challenges?

It’s usually culture. I tell people if they believe in safety, saving money is easy. If you’re a seasoned restauranteur and you’ve done everything a specific way for 30 years, it’s not that you’re doing anything wrong. It’s that our world has changed. Things you could do five years ago, you can’t do anymore. Restaurants are a very touchy-feely family environment. That’s probably my biggest challenge—saying, “We’ve got to help you improve things because current behaviors at your business are costing you money.”

So we want to help you be a business owner and handle the challenges you’re facing. We’re not just an insurance brokerage—we’re also an HR and safety company. Quoting insurance is just one part of it. We take pride in our consultative approach. We often say that when you go to the doctor and get a prescription, you don’t go right into surgery. You’ve got to put together a plan. That’s what we do—we come in and do full diagnosis. It doesn’t matter who’s working on their insurance. We work in 12-month cycles. It really comes down to what are the challenges? Let’s come up with a custom solution to fix your problems. Eventually, we’ll get paid accordingly.

Future of restaurant coverage?

Food delivery is the No. 1 change. An owner who currently does delivery thinks they can just add a third-party vendor like UberEATS or GrubHub and have them add revenue to their bottom line. What they don’t know is they’re susceptible to additional lawsuits because of how their insurance policies are written. We’re constantly educating our clients.

Favorite success story?

One of my large restaurant groups based out of San Francisco is a world-renowned chef. They were working with multiple brokers, and they kept growing, but they had no consistency with how they handled claims. We were able to determine that we should create a landing page in their own private secured area where they could have all their managers log in to not only report claims but understand how to handle workers comp specifically.

We built them a customized web portal through our website to give them consistency with claims handling. Every time the forms were filled out, the insurance carrier got a copy, we got a copy and the corporate office got a copy. Claims were reported and returned to the carrier about a week faster than previously. We brought their loss ratio down by about 30% in 12 months.