{"id":3348,"date":"2015-08-19T10:17:08","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T16:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/?p=3348"},"modified":"2019-03-27T13:09:58","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T19:09:58","slug":"portland-maine-restaurant-insurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/portland-maine-restaurant-insurance\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Portland Maine Restaurant Owners&#8217; Nightmares &#8211; Solved by Insurance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Portland Maine is a foodie town. In a&nbsp;city of 65,000, our city hall issues about&nbsp;600 food prep licenses. Between&nbsp;<a title=\"5 Maine chefs claim James beard award finalist spots | Portland Press Herald\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pressherald.com\/2015\/03\/24\/mainers-claim-4-spots-in-james-beard-award-finals\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Beard Award finalists<\/a>, dining savvy locals and&nbsp;<a title=\"Portland Maine: Locavore... | New York Times\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/01\/travel\/portland-me-locavore-in-menu-and-decor.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">travel magazine-inspired foodie tourists<\/a>, Portland &nbsp;is a popular &#8211; and challenging &#8211; town&nbsp;to run a successful restaurant. The stiff competition raises the bar for everyone. There&#8217;s little&nbsp;room for error or bad luck.&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/menu.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-large wp-image-3381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/menu-791x1024.png\" alt=\"menu of restaurant disasters\" width=\"395\" height=\"512\" hspace=\"20\" vspace=\"30\"><\/a><\/p>\n<h4>The Unfriendly&nbsp;Fire<\/h4>\n<p>You&#8217;re careful with your life&#8217;s work. But no matter how often you clean your filters, or get&nbsp;your Ansul and fire extinguishers checked, fire is a threat every day. Oils, high temp grills and gas ranges are a delicate combination. The danger doesn&#8217;t go away when you close up for the night. Appliances can be left on. Lighted candles can be forgotten. Appliances and extension cords can short out. <a title=\"Food Safety After a Fire | Minnesota Dept of Health\" href=\"http:\/\/www.health.state.mn.us\/divs\/eh\/food\/fs\/fsafterfire.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">After a fire, officials will force you to throw out any food<\/a> for fear of contamination.<\/p>\n<h4>The&nbsp;Problem Neighbor<\/h4>\n<p>Food bloggers&nbsp;and tourists call Portland &#8220;<a title=\"Portland Replaces Boston as &quot;America's Coziest City&quot; | Boston.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/travel\/new-england\/2015\/02\/10\/portland-replaces-boston-america-coziest-city\/sNwHKLu1iChyXcrkKVvxdM\/story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">quaint and cozy<\/a>&#8220;. What that really means is we&#8217;re wedged into a tight peninsula. It&#8217;s not unusual to have 3 or 4 restaurants in one city block &#8211; even more in the Old Port. Plus, apartments and offices above. No matter how&nbsp;careful you are, you can be done in by one of your less careful neighbors. A frozen pipe upstairs that leaks into your dining room, or a <a title=\"Fore Street Fire Businesses Could be Shut for Weeks | PressHerald.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pressherald.com\/2013\/09\/21\/fore-street-fire-businesses-could-be-closed-for-weeks_2013-09-21\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fire &nbsp;up the block can shut down YOUR restaurant<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h4>CLOSED, for&#8230;?<\/h4>\n<p>Diners are fickle. If you&#8217;re off line for just a few weeks, even your regulars can find a new spot in a restaurant town like Portland. It can take months &#8211; or longer &#8211; to get business back to pre-shutdown levels. Meanwhile, you have bills to pay. An estimated 25% of businesses never re-0pen after a disaster. In the restaurant business, that&#8217;s probably a lot higher.<\/p>\n<h4>The Difficult&nbsp;Diner<\/h4>\n<p>No matter how good your restaurant is, not every customer experience is flawless. It isn&#8217;t always food-related. People can trip on a carpet or fall on stairs or on the sidewalk. They don&#8217;t even have to be your customers. Someone can be injured&nbsp;in your parking lot. Of course, the food business has its own unique hazards. A customer&#8217;s&nbsp;stomach flu can sometimes become &#8220;food poisoning&#8221;; a&nbsp;broken tooth attributed to a piece of shell in their meal. &nbsp;It&#8217;s expensive to defend against these accusations &#8211; and expensive to make the situation right if you were in the wrong.<\/p>\n<h4>Drinking and&#8230;?<\/h4>\n<p>Most Portland restaurants&nbsp;have a full bar or good beer and wine list. Alcohol sales can be the difference between a profit and a loss. Of course there are plenty of regular bars in town. That means your diners may have drinks before they arrive at your place, and more after leaving. If they get into an accident on the way home and are found to be over .08, people they harm&nbsp;might <a title=\"Parents of Man Hurt in DUI Crash Sue... | BDN\" href=\"http:\/\/bangordailynews.com\/2009\/08\/22\/news\/parents-of-man-hurt-in-dui-crash-sue-bars-others\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">sue&nbsp;any business&nbsp;that served the negligent driver<\/a>. Even if you&#8217;re blameless, that lawsuit can be expensive to defend.<\/p>\n<h4>Restaurant Insurance to the Rescue<\/h4>\n<p>A thoughtful <a title=\"Portland Maine Business Insurance | Noyes Hall &amp; Allen \" href=\"http:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/business-insurance\/\">Maine restaurant insurance<\/a> program can protect your business from all of these nightmares and more. Insurance may not make your worries disappear, but it can help you sleep better after a long night&#8217;s work. And, it can keep&nbsp;a terrible&nbsp;day at work&nbsp;from destroying&nbsp;your business. If you own or run a Portland Maine area restaurant, food truck, bakery&nbsp;or other food prep business, call a <a title=\"Contact My Agent | Noyes Hall &amp; Allen Insurance | South Portland Maine\" href=\"http:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/policy-services\/contact-my-agent\/\">Noyes Hall &amp; Allen Insurance agent<\/a> at 207-799-5541. We&#8217;ll work with you and your budget to keep your nightmares at bay, so you can focus on what you love most: creating great food.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Portland Maine is a foodie town. In a&nbsp;city of 65,000, our city hall issues about&nbsp;600 food prep licenses. Between&nbsp;Beard Award finalists, dining savvy locals and&nbsp;travel magazine-inspired foodie tourists, Portland &nbsp;is a popular &#8211; and challenging &#8211; town&nbsp;to run a successful restaurant. The stiff competition raises the bar for everyone. There&#8217;s little&nbsp;room for error or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,11],"tags":[32,64,6,62,63,65],"class_list":["post-3348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-liability-insurance","category-business-property-insurance-business-insurance","tag-doing-business-in-maine","tag-insurance-agent","tag-liability","tag-maine","tag-portland","tag-portland-maine-insurance-agent"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3348"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5488,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348\/revisions\/5488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noyeshallallen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}