Insurance for bars and taverns

Bars and taverns log 1.3 recordable injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers — 43 percent below private industry's 2.3 and number 51 of 54 trades here. The injury record is not the hard part of insuring this trade; the liability and contract requirements are.

Tailor the checklist

1Bars and taverns 1.3 per 100
2Private industry 2.3 per 100
3Rank of 54 #51

Total recordable cases per 100 full-time workers, 2024: this trade against private industry and the 54 trades on this site. Bars to scale. Source: BLS SOII Table 1.

Recordable cases

1.3

per 100 FTE, 2024

Serious cases (DART)

0.6

46% of all cases

Fatal injuries, 2024

≈8.4 per 100,000 FTE

Workforce

213,955

full-time equivalents

What goes wrong in this trade

Dram-shop claims after a patron leaves intoxicated, fights and assaults on the premises, and slips on wet floors; standard general liability excludes the alcohol exposure.

The checklist for bars and taverns

Liquor
Liquor liability
The core exposure: injury caused by someone you served. Standard GL excludes it, and some states require proof of it for a liquor licence.
Required for a liquor licence in some states; excluded from standard GL.
GL
General liability
Slips, falls and injuries to guests that do not involve alcohol service.
Not required by federal law. Required in practice by most contracts, landlords and many state contractor licences.
WC
Workers' compensation
Required once you have employees in nearly every state.
Required by state law in nearly every state once you have employees; the employee-count threshold and exemptions are set state by state and are not reproduced here.
Umbrella
Commercial umbrella / excess
Dram-shop verdicts can exceed a primary liquor limit.
Not required by law; required by many general contractors and commercial landlords.

Red tags mark policy types that a law or licence usually requires; green tags are what contracts, landlords and clients ask for. Tailor the list for your situation (no employees, no vehicles, alcohol) with the checklist tool.

What the injury record means for the premium

Bars and taverns: total recordable cases, cases with days away/restriction/transfer (DART) and cases with days away from work, per 100 FTE, 2024, columns to scale.

With 1.3 cases per 100 workers the workers' compensation base rate for this class is comparatively modest, and only 46 percent of cases involved days away, restriction or transfer. Where the premium goes instead is liability: the core exposure: injury caused by someone you served standard gl excludes it, and some states require proof of it for a liquor licence, and that is a general-liability and professional-liability question rather than a payroll one. Expect the certificate requirements in your contracts to matter more than your loss history.

The nearest trades by injury rate are security and alarm installers (1.4), dental offices (1.4), site preparation (excavation) contractors (1.5); the same payroll insured in those classes would start from a similar workers' comp base.

Legal, licence or contract?

Fixed by law

Workers' compensation once you have employees, in nearly every state (threshold and exemptions set by the state; not reproduced here).
State minimum auto liability on any vehicle the business operates.
Liquor liability, where the state liquor licence requires it.

Asked for by contracts and licences

Getting quotes. Take this checklist to a broker who writes bars and taverns — ask them to quote each line separately so you can see what the 1.3-per-100 class rate is doing to the workers' comp figure versus the liability lines. This site does not sell or quote insurance.

Sources: BLS Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, Table 1 (2024), incidence rates per 100 full-time workers; BLS SOII Table 3 (2024), hours worked by detailed industry; BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, Table A-1 (2024). Fatal rate per 100,000 FTE is derived (count ÷ hours × 200,000,000) and approximate. Checked 2026-10-24.