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St. Louis restaurants are facing another quandary in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. As more people opt to eat at home, restaurants are scrambling to pick up business through options such as delivery and curbside pickup. With delivery, there are many precautions that must be taken.
A restaurant sending employees to deliver food must have hired and non-owned auto liability, said J.D. Powers, president of Powers Insurance and Risk Management. If they do not have this, the driver must have a personal auto policy to be covered during deliveries.
However, most personal auto policies exclude coverage if the person delivers with their vehicle. Employees need disclose this activity to their insurance and get an endorsement on their policy to be covered while making deliveries. Otherwise, if they get in an accident or have a collision, their personal vehicle is not covered. “It could be pretty devastating if they don’t disclose to personal insurance,” Powers says.
Some restaurants may have their own cars for deliveries. In that case, a company’s commercial auto insurance would apply.
Contract services such as Postmates, Grubhub, DoorDash, Uber Eats, as well as Food Pedaler (a St. Louis-based bicycle-delivery service), offer an alternative to self-delivery. Postmates, for one, has emphasized its commitment to the “healthy and safety of our entire community,” it said in a recent statement. Postmates (and others) have also introduced non-contact deliveries, an option that provides distancing between customers and delivery workers. Several third-party services are currently offering discounted (and even free) deliveries.
“Postmates has taken actions, in consultation with the CDC, lawmakers, and public health officials, to provide couriers, merchants, and our customers with additional resources for managing the potential consequences of the outbreak,” the company said.
Pizza Head on South Grand, for example, is delivering through Postmates while it stays open during new hours, noon–8 p.m. The restaurant is completely to-go, will only be serving whole pies, and is taking credit-card payments over the phone, owner Scott Sandler wrote in an Instagram post.
However, some restaurants in St. Louis are forgoing delivery altogether and opting for curbside pickup, where guests can prepay for their food and preset an appointment to pick up outside the restaurant. (The Post-Dispatch's Ian Froeb has complied a running list of restaurants that have limited their hours, added curbside pick up or delivery, or temporarily closed during the crisis. At this writing, the number of local restaurants that have temporarily closed stands at 50, plus two permanent closures.)
Mac’s Local Eats, for example, is pausing all walk-in business starting this Wednesday and transitioning to curbside pickup, the restaurant said in a social media post. “While we hope to keep our doors open, to support staff, we also realize it’s of utmost importance to prioritize the safety of our guests, staff, and community at large. We must practice social distancing and isolation in an effort to ‘flatten the curve,’” Mac’s said.
Still, curbside pickup could disappear with stricter quarantine instructions. The current state of affairs “isn’t good for anybody,” Powers notes, and restaurants are trying to make the best of a very difficult situation.
