What do you do when you don’t feel like making dinner? Many families get on the phone, and place an order for delivery from a local pizza place. There is a brand new type of insurance policy called SLICE that is designed to protect pizza parlor owners in case their drivers get into an accident.
Pizza parlors get a big chunk of their income specifically from people who want to have their food order delivered to their door by a driver who works for the pizza parlor. We have all had nights when even the thought of cooking dinner requires more energy than we actually have. These are the nights when the extra charge that some places add to orders that are delivered suddenly sounds reasonable.
There seems to be an insurance policy for just about everything that can be imagined. So, I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there is something that could essentially be called “pizza business insurance”. In fact, this type of insurance is actually a very important line of coverage for the food service industry.
When you order a pizza for delivery, it is sent out to you by a driver who is an employee of the pizza parlor that you called. Delivery drivers, like all drivers, are supposed to have a valid driver’s license, and their own auto insurance policy. The driver’s individual auto insurance policy will not cover them if they get into a traffic accident while working as a delivery driver.
This means that the owners of pizza places have to take out excess insurance coverage on the drivers that they employ. Some of the insurers they can turn to in order to purchase this coverage are Wills Group, Progressive, or Allianz SE’s Fireman’s Fund. Obviously, whenever someone needs to buy additional insurance, it is going to cost that business owner more money.
Now, there is something new in the pizza business. It is a type of insurance offered by a California Insurance brokerage called EPIC Programs Group. The insurance is designed to offer a certain amount of liability protection to owners of pizza parlors. Specifically, it is a type of liability insurance that covers the owner in case one of their delivery drivers causes a liability issue.
The insurance is called SLICE. It stands for “Safety, Loss, Control, Insurance, Coverage, Expertise”. It is available in 40 states. The program includes mandatory driver training, and other things that are risk control measures. The insurance is being underwritten by a different insurer, (that is separate from EPIC), that specializes in auto insurance coverage.
It sounds like pizza parlor owners who get SLICE are getting a good amount of insurance protection. Hopefully, SLICE costs them less than whatever they were doing before this program existed. It would be lovely if the money the saved was enough to remove the extra charge that people have to pay if they want to have their pizza delivered to them.
Image by H. Michael Karshis on Flickr