Hi all, does anyone out there have experience in obtaining insurance for Food Hubs or Vegie Box projects?
We are running our vegie box project out of a venue, who have their own insurance to cover their customers, but we need to also cover our customers in terms of food quality, our workers and volunteers.
I did have useful conversation with an insurance broker re. South East Food Hub a few years ago and I can dig up the contact if necessary, but I suspect there would be others with more up to date and āin practiceā examples. Perhaps @rob @bawbawfoodhub @jademiles2 @FoodConnect would be able to tell you about their insurance?
Hey @slff,
We have Public and Product liability insurance through GIOās Not-for-profit insurance policy. It costs about $1200 per year for us at the moment.
We also pay whatever is required of us for WorkCover, which covers our volunteers too (because they receive some remuneration in the form of a veggie box). As you probably know, the annual fee varies with the rateable remuneration of the business/organisation in question. Ours is currently about $600 per year.
weāve used Markey Insurance brokers which was organised by the crew at Food Connect Sydney many moons ago. It would be great to have an āethicalā provider of insurance if there is such a thing!
Thanks everyone - Emma-Kate I agree about trying to find an ethical
provider, I did some research into ethical insurance providers last year
with no joy at allā¦ thereās a niche there I think!
Weāll look into your suggestions.
Currently at @edigrocer we use Allianzās āPublic and Products Liabilityā small business insurance which costs us ~$50 a month.
Technically at the moment we are still a Sole Trader and will have to reassess when we move into co-operative status (fingers crossed for that happening in the next year!).
We also tried looking to the most ethical insurance we could find, but kept hitting walls. Allianz did come up in a few (self written) articles, and so we went with them. Actually it worked out that we approached our co-op bank (Credit Union of Australia) if they had any insurance that would work, which they did! ā¦ it just happened to be underwritten by Allianz. All full circle.
Let us know if you find anything better! Good luck!
Thanks @Jono @kirsten @EKR @rob for all your suggestions - just wanted to record that we followed up with GIO and they were a no go - we are also involved in food growing activities so they wouldnāt touch us. They put us onto AON who have a not-for-profit section and we dealt with Mick Singh who has been absolutely brilliant, efficient and the first insurance body Iāve spoken with who arenāt nervous about insuring us! Their rates are super good too - $825 for $20 million public liability, and $290 for voluntary workers cover.
Thatās great news @slff! Weāre reviewing our insurance right now, so this is good info. Could you provide Mick Singhās direct contact details please?
Cheers, Emma-Kate
Mick Singh | Client Executive
Aon Risk Solutions | Affinity | Not for Profit
Level 1, 130 George Street Parramatta NSW 2124
t: +61 2 8623 4211 <+61%202%208623%204211> | f: +61 2 9253 7299
<+61%202%209253%207299>
e: mick.singh@aon.com mick.singh@aon.com | aon.com.au
http://www.aon.com.au/australia/default.jsp
At Beechworth Food Co-op we use these guys below. Our insurance is around $1800 / yr and that covers volunteer workers insurance (like workcover but for volunteers) $397, public liability $915 and board professional indemnity $521. Good to see the other suggestions too, weāll be shopping round next year.
Michael Gordon | Account Executive | Local Community Insurance Services
Lv 1, 148 Frome Street | Adelaide | SA | 5000
Tel: +61 1300 853 800 | DD: +61 (0)8 8235 6480 | Fax: +61 (0)8 8235 6448
michael.gordon@jlta.com.au | www.lcis.com.au
LOCAL COMMUNITY INSURANCE SERVICES
Hiya folks, Iām interested to learn if anyone has found out more about reasonably priced and ethical insurers? My very tiny bulk foods scheme that only operates 3 times a year needs insurance and itās looking very expensive so far. Any tips?
Hi Cynthia, we ended up going with AON they were the most reasonable & best to deal with after much searching! I think I posted our contact there in an earlier post but let us know if you need it sent through again.
I was thinking a little about this over the weekend, and I was wondering how much peopleās insurance is tied to a specific place?
Just wondering about whether thereās any possibility for sharing insurance costs if a couple of really similar enterprises were bundled together collectively?
Or is it tied to the number of events being held - e.g. @CynthiaLim is your insurance based on the number of times the scheme runs, or is it a flat amount?
Iām also interested to know when people need insurance - is it a matter of size? Trading terms?
Good questionā¦ for Slow Food in Australia we have an umbrella insurance
policy (public liability and volunteer) for all of our activities across
all our convivia (there are about 17) - and all of our convivia are
separate legal entities.
So I guess there is the potential to investigate something similar for
local food groups/social enterprises/community organisationsā¦
I can have a closer look at the Slow Food insurance policy and see how itās
worded. Potentially the same organisation could be approached.