Insurance Essentials for a New Distillery Business

Are you the proud owner of a brewery or distillery and looking to protect its future? Do you worry about unforeseen situations that can compromise your finances? If so, then you need to learn all that you can about the insurance essentials for a new distillery business.

Doing so can help you ensure you have all your ducks in a row. With the right insurance agency on your side, you can go through any accident unscathed.

See below for an in-depth guide on the insurance essentials for a new distillery business and why certain policies are must-haves.

1. General Liability Insurance

Distilleries and breweries know all about covering your bases. For example, as a brewery, you will want to “cover your bases” by brewing the typical types of craft beer that customers will come in looking to taste such as IPAs, lagers, brown ales, pale ales, and so forth.

Once you have those are always on tap, you can branch off into other types of beer. This will help you differentiate your brand.

That’s the thought process behind general liability insurance: it helps you “cover your bases” with the most comprehensive business insurance coverage. Once you have it in place, you can invest in other coverages to ensure you’re protected from any emergency.

General liability insurance will help you mitigate some of the most common risks a brewery or distillery will face, such as bodily injury on a client, property damage, medical payments, advertising injuries, and so forth.

Essentially, whenever your business is sued, general liability brewery insurance can help you ensure that your company doesn’t experience a significant setback. All of the costs associated with the lawsuit will be covered and you can go about your business as usual. Your lawyer will handle the lawsuit, your insurance company will handle the expenses!

2. Workers’ Compensation Insurance

Behind every perfectly-poured glass that your brewery sells, is a dedicated team of workers. Your staff works hard to ensure that every product that comes out meets the high standards that your business has.

As with any other business that requires manual labor, there will always be risks associated with the manual labor that your staff performs on the job. You can (and should) spend hours training them on proper workplace safety tactics, but all it takes is one external factor to cause an accident to occur.

When that happens, your workers might suffer an injury or two that can lead to expensive medical bills, loss of wages, and even long-term disability.

If your business doesn’t have workers’ compensation in place when that accident occurs, then you’ll be held liable for all of the costs. Not only that, but since workers’ comp is required by federal law, you’ll have to face hefty fines and penalties.

Workers’ compensation will help your workers to get all of the financial coverage they need. It can also save the relationship between you and your best workers since your insurance agency will be the one to communicate with the worker directly.

3. Umbrella Insurance

Some of you may have heard of umbrella insurance but are unsure of what it does. Essentially, umbrella insurance helps you ensure that you aren’t forced to pay any money out-of-pocket when an emergency arises.

General liability insurance does a great job of covering the cost of most claims, but there are a few instances where the claim will exceed the limit of your general liability policy. As a result, your business would be forced to cover the remainder of the claim. That might still be thousands of dollars.

Fortunately, your umbrella insurance can cover the additional costs and prevent you from spending a dime out of your pocket. Your distillery business will continue with the same budget it’s always had, not having to pay anything to cover emergencies.

4. Product Liability Insurance

While you’re making your distillery products purely for enjoyment and will encourage customers to drink responsibly, you never know what can happen.

If a customer gets injured and believes that your product is to blame, then they may decide to file a lawsuit against you. Should that happen, product liability insurance can cover all of the legal costs and/or compensation if a settlement is reached.

This allows you to create your products and have protection for them in the future. Even if customers feel your product is connected to their injury, you’ll have financial security.

5. Commercial Property Insurance

As we all know, breweries and distilleries require a good amount of equipment to thrive, such as kegs, kettles, canning lines, bottling lines, boilers, storage tanks, the list goes on and on.

If that equipment is stored on your property (that you own) then you’re the one financially responsible for any damage they sustain in an emergency like a flood or a fire.

Thankfully, commercial property insurance can give you coverage. Anything that’s damaged on your property from unforeseen events will be replaced to help you speed up the recovery process.

Invest in Proper Distillery Insurance for Your Needs

Now that you have seen an in-depth guide on the insurance essentials for your new distillery business, be sure to use this information to your advantage. Whether you’re opening a distillery or a few years into it, insurance is vital.

Take the time to read the details of your current insurance policy. The details of your policy can make a big difference in whether or not you have the proper coverage.

Make sure you know the proper business insurance products and the types of coverage you should invest in. To get started, reach out to an insurance agency that specializes in insurance for distilleries and breweries like www.centralcarolina.com. Get a quote on the best coverage for your business.