If your restaurant delivers and your drivers use their own cars, you may be carrying a liability you do not know about. The personal auto policy you are counting on usually does not apply.
The gap
Personal auto policies generally exclude business use, and delivering food for pay is business use. So when a driver has an accident while delivering, their personal insurer can review the business-use question, and the liability can flow to the restaurant as the employer. The driver thought they were covered, the restaurant assumed the driver was covered, and neither was.
How hired and non-owned auto fills it
Hired and non-owned auto coverage is built for exactly this: it addresses your restaurant’s liability when employees drive their own or rented vehicles for the business. It does not insure the employee’s car for damage, but it is aimed at the liability that delivery creates. For pizza, delivery-heavy, and catering operations, it is one of the more important and most overlooked coverages.
What about delivery apps
Third-party delivery platforms carry some of their own coverage, which changes the picture if you deliver only through apps. But the moment your own staff or vehicles are involved, the auto exposure is yours to address. The details depend on how your delivery actually works.
Where the app’s coverage stops and yours starts
If your drivers use a delivery platform, do not assume the app’s insurance closes the gap. Platform coverage is typically contingent and narrow: it often applies only while a delivery is actively in progress, sits excess over the driver’s own policy, and can leave the stretch between orders uncovered. Meanwhile the driver’s personal auto policy may exclude the trip entirely because it was a business use. That leaves a seam right where your exposure lives, because an injured third party will look past the driver to the restaurant that sent them. Hired and non-owned auto is what covers your liability for employees and contractors driving on your behalf, whether they are using their own car or a platform, and it does not care whether the app’s contingent coverage happened to apply that minute. It is the layer that keeps a delivery crash from becoming your uninsured problem.
Questions to ask your advisor
- Does our program include hired and non-owned auto for delivery?
- Are any vehicles we own used for the business, and are they on commercial auto?
- How does our coverage interact with the delivery apps we use?
- What does our policy say about business use by staff drivers?
- If a delivery accident happened tomorrow, where would the liability land?
What to do
If your restaurant delivers with staff drivers, it is worth confirming you carry hired and non-owned auto, and making sure owned delivery vehicles are on a commercial auto policy. A quick review looks at a gap that can be very expensive.
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