The walk-in failed on Saturday night. Your property policy is probably not the answer.
Commercial property insurance pays when something happens to your equipment. It does not usually pay when your equipment simply stops working on its own. That difference is where the spoiled stock lives.
Start a quote file Read the short answer firstOutside cause, or the machine itself.
The stock, the unit, and the nights you stay shut.
Maintenance records are part of the cover.
Does my restaurant insurance cover food spoiled when a fridge or freezer fails?
Usually not under the property section on its own. A standard commercial property policy responds to damage from an outside cause, such as fire, water or theft, and it commonly excludes the mechanical or electrical breakdown of the equipment itself. Spoiled stock after a compressor burns out is answered by equipment breakdown cover, which is a separate section that has to be on the policy before the failure happens.
Owners find this out at the worst moment, because nothing about a fridge failing feels like an exclusion. The policy is not asking what was damaged. It is asking what caused it. Fire damaged your freezer is a property claim. Your freezer broke is not, unless breakdown cover is there.
A single overnight failure produces three different claims, and they are not all answered by the same section. There is the stock, which is the loss everyone thinks of first and often the smallest. There is the unit itself, which may need a compressor or a full replacement. And there is the trading you lose while you are waiting, which is the one that hurts, because a kitchen without cold storage does not open. Equipment breakdown cover is written to answer all three, but each one is a separate item with its own limit, and a policy can carry one without the others.
Four things a kitchen owner should know before the next hot weekend.
It covers sudden failure, not wear
The trigger is an accident to the equipment itself. A motor burning out, an electrical fault, a surge from inside the building, a control board failing. What it does not cover is gradual decline you could see coming. A compressor that has been struggling for months and was never serviced is a maintenance problem, and insurers read the service history to tell the two apart.
The stock limit is often small
Spoilage is usually a sub-limit inside the breakdown section rather than the full policy limit. On a busy kitchen with a stocked walk-in and a chest freezer it can be reached with one failure. It is worth knowing the number now, because it is easy to raise at renewal and impossible to raise afterwards.
Lost income has its own waiting period
Income cover after a breakdown often does not start at hour one. There is a waiting period, measured in hours, and short closures fall inside it. If your business cannot trade at all without one piece of equipment, that waiting period is the number to look at, not the limit.
A power cut is different again
If the failure is at the utility rather than in your building, breakdown cover does not respond, because nothing of yours broke. That is service interruption or off-premises power cover, and it is another separate item. Many restaurant policies carry one and not the other, which is why two neighbouring kitchens can get two different answers to the same blackout.
Three files that turned on paperwork, not on the freezer.
No service history
The unit was fifteen years old and had never been on a service contract, because it had never given trouble. When it failed, there was nothing to show it had been maintained. The claim became a long argument about wear against sudden failure, and the argument was lost on the absence of records rather than on the facts.
Nobody knew until Monday
The failure happened Friday night and was found on Monday morning. Everything was lost instead of some of it. A temperature alarm that texts a phone costs very little, and after a claim insurers often ask for one anyway. Fitting it first is cheaper than fitting it as a condition of renewal.
The stock figure was from before
The spoilage limit was set when the restaurant had one fridge and a small menu. Two expansions later the walk-in holds several times the stock and the limit had never moved. The claim was valid, the payment was capped, and the difference came out of the business.
The ones that come up the morning after.
How do I know if I already have equipment breakdown cover?
Look at the declarations page for a separate line naming equipment breakdown, boiler and machinery, or mechanical breakdown. If you only see building, contents and business interruption, you very likely do not have it. Send us the page and you will get a straight yes or no in writing.
Is the food itself covered, or only the machine?
Both can be, but they are separate items. Spoilage cover pays for the stock, breakdown cover pays to repair or replace the unit, and income cover pays for the trading you lose. A policy can carry one and not the others, so the question to ask is which of the three are on yours and at what limits.
What if the landlord’s building system caused it?
Then it depends whose equipment failed and what your lease says. Building services in a leased unit often belong to the landlord, and their policy answers for their equipment, but your stock and your lost trading are still your loss. This is worth checking before a failure, because the lease usually decides it and leases vary a great deal.
Does a generator solve the problem?
It solves a power cut. It does not solve a compressor failing, because the electricity was never the issue. A generator is genuinely useful and insurers like seeing one, but it covers a different risk from the one that closes most kitchens.
We are a small takeaway. Is this worth adding?
The cost of the cover is generally modest and the question is not the size of the kitchen but whether you can trade without cold storage for a few days. If the answer is no, the exposure is the same as a large restaurant even though the stock is smaller, because the lost trading is the bigger number in both cases.
Not the question you had? Send your declarations page and the question with it through the quote file and you will get a written answer, not a sales call.
Check the policy while the fridge is still running.
Equipment breakdown is one of the cheapest sections on a restaurant policy and one of the most commonly missing. It takes a minute to confirm.