How to Avoid Common Food Truck Insurance Claims

Third-Party Bodily Injury Claims

Bodily injury is used to describe an event in which your business product or service caused someone bodily harm. Bodily injury encompasses a variety of accidents—from someone tripping on your business equipment and falling to someone getting sick from the food you served them.

What can you do to avoid bodily injury claims? Well, you can reduce the risk of someone tripping and falling by setting up in a safe location with few or no hazards. If you set up any equipment outside your truck, make sure it’s easy to see and in a low foot traffic location where people won’t trip over it. Any unused equipment should be safely stored where it can’t be tripped over.

To reduce the chances of getting a customer sick, make sure you and your employees adhere to proper health and safety guidelines on how to handle, prepare, and cook your food. Try to use fresh ingredients every day, and never sell food past the expiration date. If your food contains any allergens, such as dairy, wheat, or nuts, make sure it’s properly labelled for customers to see.

On the insurance side of things, you can protect your business from bodily injury claims by purchasing Food Truck Insurance that includes general and product liability coverage. These policies are designed to mitigate the out-of-pocket cost that bodily injury claims create in the unfortunate chance that an accident involving your business occurs.

Third-Party Property Damage Claims

Similar to bodily injury claims, third-party property damage is used to describe an event in which your business causes damage to the property of another individual or business. As businesses that often operate at more than one location, property damage claims are among the most common that food trucks can face.

How can you avoid property damage claims? When setting up your food truck, make sure the area is free of obstructions or other objects that could be damaged. Give your food truck lots of space between objects and other trucks to avoid any unfortunate accidents.

One of the most common causes of property damage we’ve seen at FLIP comes from runaway tents and other business equipment that gets carried away in the wind before smashing into someone’s personal property. If you set up any equipment outside of your food truck—like a tent, chairs, or a-frame signage—make sure it’s securely weighed down.

From an insurance perspective, a Food Truck Insurance plan with a general liability policy can protect your food truck from the cost of third-party property damage claims. As a side note, many locations and events where you might do business require you to include them on your insurance plan as an additional insured, which will extend your coverage to them if an accident involving your food truck occurs.

Cyber Liability Claims

Cyber liability is used to describe an event in which your business experiences a cyber security breach. This can be from malware attacks, phishing schemes, or myriad other ways. With more than 2,000 cyber attacks occurring every day, cyber liability is of utmost importance for small businesses.

Luckily, there are many things you can do to reduce the risk of falling victim to cyber crime, including educating yourself and your staff about proper online security practices. As a business owner, you can implement training or hire a service to do so. It’s also a good idea to install spam filters and other anti-malware software that will protect your computers from attacks.

You can also provide yourself with extra protection by including cyber liability into your Food Truck Insurance plan. Cyber liability is specifically designed to protect against the financial repercussions of cyber crime and can protect from first-party claims—like the cost of repairing, replacing, or recovering data—as well as third-party claims—which can arise when your customer information is stolen.