Workers' compensation covers your own employees when they are hurt or become ill because of their work: their medical care and part of the wages they lose while they recover. It also includes employers' liability, and it is the one policy that protects your staff — general liability does not.
What workers' comp covers
A kitchen is a busy, hot, sharp place, and front-of-house is not much calmer. Workers' comp is there for the everyday ways people get hurt on the job:
- Burns from a fryer, a grill, a steam wand or a pan handle left over a flame.
- Cuts from knives, slicers and broken glass.
- Slips and falls on a wet floor behind the line or in the walk-in.
- Strains from lifting delivery cases, kegs or stock pots.
- Repetitive injuries that build up over months of the same motion, like wrist pain from hours on the line.
When one of these happens, workers' comp pays for the employee's medical treatment and replaces part of the income they lose while they cannot work. Employers' liability, the second part of the policy, responds when the business itself is held responsible for an employee's injury beyond what workers' comp pays.
What it does not cover
Workers' comp is about your own staff. Other risks need other policies:
- A customer who slips and falls is a general liability claim, not workers' comp.
- Your equipment, furniture and inventory are covered by commercial property, which a Business Owner's Policy (BOP) bundles with general liability.
- Claims tied to serving alcohol need liquor liability, which can be added for businesses that sell, serve or furnish alcohol.
- A vehicle your business uses is a matter for auto insurance, even when the employee driving it is covered by workers' comp.
Do you need it?
Whether a business must carry workers' compensation depends on the state and on how many employees it has, and the rules differ from state to state. In a few states it can only be bought from a state fund rather than from private carriers. If you are not sure what applies to you, check with your state or ask one of our licensed agents.
Even where it is not required, it is worth thinking about. A single serious kitchen injury can mean medical bills and lost wages that a small business would otherwise face on its own.
What the price depends on
Workers' comp is priced very differently from liability insurance. It is not about your revenue as much as about your people:
- What each group of employees does. Every kind of work has its own class code. A cook, a server and a bookkeeper are rated under different codes, so splitting your team by the work they do keeps the safer payroll from being priced like the riskier one.
- The payroll behind each group. The price is worked out on what you pay the people in each class.
- Your state. Rates and rules are set state by state.
- Your history. Past claims and how long you have been in business both play a part.
Because of this, no price can be promised in advance. The only way to know is to get a real quote for your business.
How getting a quote with AllSafe works
You can get a workers' comp quote online in one of two ways: a short form, or our AI chat, where you describe your business in your own words.
- Tell us who to reach and where the business is. A name, an email, a phone number and the address where your people work.
- Describe your team. Write it in one line — for example, "six in the kitchen, one delivery driver, and my partner does the books" — and we split it into groups by the kind of work, for you to check and correct. Or fill in the groups yourself.
- Add a few details about the business. The type of business, when it started, expected revenue, how it is owned and any recent claims.
- See your quote. It comes back from a licensed carrier, not as an estimate we calculated. Before checkout you see every fee and what the policy will not cover.
Prefer to talk it through? A licensed agent can help at any step.
