Everything you serve is hot enough to be a claim.
Cover for cafés and coffee shops — burn and slip claims, the espresso and refrigeration equipment, and the fit-out that is usually somebody else’s building.
Tell us the situation.
One licensed human replies the same business day — not five agents, not an auto-responder. If the policy you have is already the right one, we will tell you.
We use this to quote and service your insurance, and we do not sell it or pass it to lead networks. Privacy policy.
What coffee shop businesses actually need.
General liability
Burns, slips and the ordinary exposures of a busy public room.
Without it — Hot liquid served across a counter to a moving crowd.
Equipment breakdown
Espresso machines, grinders, refrigeration and the boiler inside them.
Without it — A dead espresso machine closes the business until it is fixed.
Business income
Income while closed after a covered loss.
Without it — Fixed rent continues and the trade goes to the shop down the road.
Tenant improvements
The counter, plumbing, extraction and finishes you installed.
Without it — The fit-out is often the largest asset and the least clearly insured.
Food and product liability
Illness or allergic reaction from food and drink served.
Without it — Milk alternatives and shared equipment make allergens a live issue.
What coffee shop operators ask us.
Is the espresso machine covered by property insurance?
Against fire or theft, yes. Against failing on its own, no — that is equipment breakdown, and a commercial espresso machine is a pressure vessel with a boiler, which is precisely the class of failure property policies exclude as internal. Given that a café with no working machine is a café that is closed, this is one of the clearest cases for the cover, and it should include the income lost while it is out.
Are burn claims common?
Common enough that insurers underwrite for them. The realistic ones are a lid failing on a takeaway cup, a handover across a counter going wrong, and a child reaching a drink at table height. What helps is unremarkable — proper lids, correct serving temperatures, staff training on handover, and prompt documented incident reporting. The last one matters most at claim, because a contemporaneous note is worth more than a recollection two years later.
We rent the unit. What is our responsibility?
The fit-out and your contents, plus whatever the lease assigns you — which in a café is often more than owners expect, including extraction, grease management and sometimes the shopfront glass. Read the lease against the policy, and settle who insures the improvements, because a café build-out running to six figures sitting uninsured between two policies is a common and avoidable outcome.
Not ready to talk? The guides answer the questions this page raises in more depth. Already insured with us and need a certificate or a policy change? Ask the service team rather than starting a quote — it is faster and it goes to the people whose job it is. We also write home and auto, which is usually cheaper alongside the business policy than apart from it.