Restaurant insurance built for the way Surrey actually eats.

It's the number of months your policy will keep paying you if you're shut down after a covered loss. Six months sounds like a lot until your kitchen needs permits, a contractor, and a new hood — each of which takes weeks. 12 or 18 months is usually the right answer for a restaurant. Your rent doesn't pause. Your loans don't pause. The indemnity period is what buys your family time.

When you lease a raw space and build out the kitchen, install the hood, put in the walk-in, add the décor — all of that is "tenant improvements." Legally the improvements belong to the landlord, but financially you paid for them. Tenant improvements is a separate limit on your policy that covers the money you put in. If it isn't scheduled properly, a fire claim pays the landlord for the building and you get nothing for the build-out.

You need proof of insurance the day you take possession of the keys. Most landlords require a Certificate of Insurance naming the landlord (and often the property management company) as additional insured before they hand over the space — sometimes before they'll even sign the lease. Talk to us at the offer stage, not after the lease is signed: it gives us time to scope your tenant improvements limit properly against the build-out budget, set the right liability limits for the landlord's contractual requirement, and have the COI ready when the landlord asks. Two hours from a 6 PM lease-signing is not when you want to discover the landlord wants $5M CGL and you only have $2M quoted.

Yes. The moment alcohol is served — wine, beer, cocktails, even at a banquet hall — the restaurant can be held responsible for what an over-served patron does after they leave. That's dram shop liability, and it's written as an endorsement on your CGL. Most landlords require it before you sign the lease. The LCRB usually requires it as part of the licence. If anyone serves alcohol at your establishment, you need this coverage.

Food-borne illness claims are covered under Commercial General Liability in most standard restaurant policies. Your insurer will investigate — kitchen records, Fraser Health environmental health reports, the complainant's medical documentation. If the claim holds up, the CGL responds. If it doesn't, the insurer defends. The important thing is the policy has adequate CGL limits and doesn't have a product liability exclusion. We check both.

It depends on whether you have equipment breakdown coverage and how your food spoilage endorsement is written. Equipment breakdown covers the mechanical failure of the compressor itself. Food spoilage covers the inventory that was in the walk-in when the temperature went out of range. Both need to be on your policy. If the spoilage limit is $5,000 and the loss was $14,000, you eat the difference. We size the limit against what actually sits in your walk-in.

Your property coverage usually responds to smoke damage from a neighbouring fire — it's considered a covered peril on most restaurant policies. If the damage forces you to close, business interruption picks up the income. If the smoke spoiled food in the walk-in, food spoilage responds. The neighbour's insurance may also be on the hook. One of our advisors — preferably the advisor who placed your coverage, or a senior advisor — stays on the phone with the adjuster from first report to final cheque. Kuljeet and Seema lead commercial claims at Prime; one of them is on your file the whole way.

Carriers expect documented hood-and-duct cleaning at a frequency appropriate to your kitchen's cooking volume — typically every 3, 6, or 12 months for high-volume, medium-volume, or low-volume operations, in line with NFPA 96 (the North American standard for ventilation control and fire protection of commercial cooking operations) and ULC-S650 (the Canadian inspection-and-cleaning standard). Missing records is the most common reason a kitchen-fire claim has trouble at the investigation stage. Keep the cleaning company's invoice and certificate on file — and email a copy to us at renewal. We'll keep them with your file so they're available the day an adjuster asks.

For existing Prime commercial clients with active policies: within 2 business hours, during commercial desk hours (Mon–Fri 8:30am–6:00pm). For new clients: same business day once we have complete information. Restaurant COIs often list a landlord, a management company, and sometimes a parent franchisor as additional insureds — that's more to build correctly than a simple single-insured COI. Two hours gives us time to get it right. If we miss the window for an existing client, we send you a $50 gift card.

"Everything is covered" is a sentence, not a coverage. The 15-minute Coverage Review answers the specific questions: what's your BI indemnity period, is tenant improvements properly scheduled, is liquor liability on the CGL, what's the food spoilage limit, does equipment breakdown cover the walk-in compressor? You get the answers in writing. You keep the document. If "everything is covered" was accurate, we'll tell you. If it wasn't, you'll see exactly where.

Yes — and not as a marketing line. People on our Fleetwood team speak English, Punjabi, and Hindi every day. Coverage reviews, claims, Certificate of Insurance requests, or walking through the policy line by line — all of it can happen in your preferred language. Ask for Kul, Kuljeet, or Seema by name when you call.

Yes. Food trucks, ghost kitchens, and cloud kitchens are different enough that the policy needs to be built differently — the truck itself is a commercial auto exposure, the kitchen equipment inside is property, the menu liability is CGL, and the locations you operate at may require specific additional insureds. We've been writing these for years as the food-truck scene in Surrey has grown.

No. Personal-use Autoplan does not cover commercial delivery use. ICBC has separate commercial rate classes for vehicles used to deliver restaurant food — and if a vehicle plated for personal use is involved in an accident during a paid delivery run, the claim can be contested or denied on use-misrepresentation grounds. The fix is a commercial rate class that matches actual use; we sort it through Autoplan at the counter and confirm what's needed for your situation. The conversation takes ten minutes; the back-end matters.

The office is in Fleetwood. The service isn't. Our restaurant clients run kitchens from Newton to Whalley, along Scott Road, out in Cloverdale, and down in South Surrey and White Rock. The address is just where we sit. Where you cook is where the service reaches.

Over the past decade, a lot of BC family brokers have been bought by national consolidators and insurance-company-owned networks. Prime hasn't. Same Shergill family. Same Fleetwood address. Same voices on the phone when you call. If you run a family restaurant — and most Surrey restaurants are family restaurants — there's something simpler about dealing with a family brokerage that hasn't been flipped.