There are certain givens about most New York City pubs: The bar is sticky, the rent is staggering, cash tips are preferred and \u2014 lesser-known, but equally true \u2014 the liability insurance is crushingly expensive.<\/p>\n
Required by most watering hole\u2019s landlords, liability insurance has long been a predictable balance sheet item, covering venue owners in case of property damage, lawsuits or other legal claims. It used to be a forgettable monthly expense, but not so since the pandemic: Now, liquor license holders say, rates have risen so high it is existentially threatening.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really bad. It’s been bad since COVID for five years now,\u201d said Keith Hamilton, co-owner of Bushwick\u2019s Our Wicked Lady. The 10-year-old bar and music venue shuttered this July<\/a>, significantly due to its bottom line becoming unsustainable due to rising liability costs, which he said rose from about $2,000 a month to approximately $4,000 a month by the end.<\/p>\n Across the U.S. in the first quarter of 2025 alone, liability coverage rates rose by 2.3%<\/a>. Annually, New York businesses are experiencing hikes of 10%<\/a>, sometimes higher.<\/p>\n Before becoming one of the nails in Our Wicked Lady\u2019s coffin, insurance rates directly led to the end of the venue\u2019s all ages shows.<\/p>\n \u201cOur broker told us he can\u2019t get any insurance companies to cover us for under-21s unless we paid an additional $50,000 a year, which is crazy,\u201d Hamilton said. \u201cSo we had to stop doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n The situation goes to the heart of what numerous NYC business owners find so frustrating about the rising rates: They don\u2019t make any logical sense, the owners say.<\/p>\n Rent is climbing, yes, but that tracks considering the market; flood insurance is rising along with the seas. But, in a decade of business, Our Wicked Lady made zero liability insurance claims yet watched its rate double.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s really no rhyme or reason for it,\u201d Hamilton said.<\/p>\n The insurance industry disagrees. The rhyme and reason come from factors including an increasingly litigious society, growing jury awards and various economic pressures (inflation, labor shortages, supply chain problems) according to various<\/a> insurer<\/a> reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n As a result, industry analysists say, many insurers simply no longer insure independent bars or venues, and the remaining companies that do are in many cases doubling rates.<\/p>\n The financial pain is being felt by policyholders nationally, with many bars \u201cforced to close their doors as the cost of liquor liability coverage rises\u201d specialty insurance distributor CRC Group wrote in a 2023 article<\/a>.<\/p>\n The fallout is quite possibly the worst in New York, though, as insurance premiums in the city average 15% higher<\/a> than the rest of the country, according to the business advocacy group Partnership for New York City. Indeed, one recent study of<\/a> New York\u2019s independent live venues found that rising insurance costs outranked rent, mortgage, and decreasing alcohol sales in terms of challenges to running a venue. Insurance charges this year are anticipated<\/a> to ultimately cost venues 55% more than last year.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s worse than rent,\u201d agreed Mark Kleback, who co-owns 7-year-old Bushwick arcade bar Wonderville with his wife.<\/p>\n He said it’s “higher than our payroll,” the process of acquiring it is opaque and antiquated and it doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s protecting them in any way: The one time the bar had a claim, it was denied.<\/p>\n Overall, \u201c\u200ait just feels like a scam\u201d Kleback said. \u201cI hate every single part of the industry. Like, I would not recommend people to open a small business because of insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n In late September, local advocacy group the Neighborhood Venue Alliance organized a panel discussion on the topic led by Dhruv Chopra, co-founder of the venue Elsewhere and New York bar owners\u2019 go-to for liability insurance advice and know-how.<\/p>\n Chopra\u2019s liability insurance know-how is impressive: In a phone interview, he casually laid out its history, its issues, and potential temporary and long-term solutions he\u2019s considered \u2014 basically none, unfortunately, so now he\u2019s seriously considering attempting to break into the insurance industry himself.<\/p>\n In the meantime, insurance is not just hurting bars\u2019 bottom lines, but subtly influencing how they operate.<\/p>\n Insurers \u201cwant to see things like earlier closures. They want to see tighter controls. They want to see you\u2019re not going to serve shots,\u201d said Chopra, who has personally seen insurers not only take such factors into account, but go on social media and use photos as evidence that premiums should be higher, creating an incentive to present as prudent and sterile.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have very cookie cutter silos for how they think about risks,\u201d Chopra said. \u201cAnd that’s just not really how nightlife works. It’s not really what makes New York and going out so much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are certain givens about most New York City pubs: The bar is sticky, the rent is staggering,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":373434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-373433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115535783050455337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}