Is a new LLC covered by my restaurant's policy?
No. Until the new company is named on the policy, it is not on the policy. The standard liability form says so in one line: no one is an insured for a limited liability company that is not shown as a named insured. The ninety days of automatic coverage a business owner's policy gives a new location does not reach a new company. The fix is one email the week the attorney files the entity.
What the policy actually says
A restaurant group usually forms a new LLC for each location, because the lender, the landlord or an investor group wants it that way. The general liability form most policies are built on has one line on this. No person or organization is an insured with respect to a limited liability company that is not shown as a named insured.
The same form has a clause for newly acquired or formed organizations. It gives a new entity automatic coverage for ninety days. It excludes partnerships, joint ventures and limited liability companies. In 2019 ISO, which publishes the form, added an optional endorsement that extends the ninety days to a new LLC, with a matching one for liquor liability. Some carriers attach it, others do not. The endorsement list on the policy is the only way to know which you have.
What a new location gets that a new company does not
A standard business owner's policy covers a newly acquired location automatically for ninety days, at a set limit, and then stops. That is a location, an address, run by a company already on the policy. A new company is a different question. The address can be on the policy while the company that signed its lease and runs its payroll is not.
Workers' comp is separate again. The new company needs its own policy, or to be added to the group's, from the day the first person is paid through its payroll. A general manager hired three months before opening is on that payroll three months before opening day.
On a policy we read this month, two of four locations were not on it, and one of them had been through a renewal without being added. The policy had not been updated since the business changed.
The one-page check
Pull the declarations page of the liability and property policy. It lists the named insureds and the locations. Count every company you have formed, including the one that does not have a store yet, and every address you operate. Compare both lists to the page.
Then look at the umbrella. It has to list every company and every underlying policy, or it does not sit over them. Then make one rule for the next opening: the week the attorney files the entity, or the week the lease is signed, whichever comes first, your agent gets the same email the landlord and the bank get. Ask for the new company to be added as a named insured on every line, with the date, in writing.
Question four on the insurance check is this one. The longer version, moment by moment from the lease to the first customer, is in the guide: Insurance through a build-out.