When selecting floors, restaurant owners should learn a new word: “tribometry”—the study of surface friction. Liberty Mutual places such importance on the subject, in fact, that it has a dedicated tribology lab at its Research Institute for Safety facility outside of Boston. The lab investigates the interactions between shoes, contaminants and floor surfaces to understand the conditions and mechanisms that lead to slips, trips and falls.

Gary L. Pohlmann, Atlanta-based managing director of Marsh Risk Consulting, concurs that tribometry is an area that most restaurant owners don't grasp as well as they should.

Pohlmann recommends that restaurants require all employees to wear slip-resistant shoes. To be effective, however, the shoes must be cleaned routinely and replaced every two to six months, adds Rose Roth, a senior vice president and hospitality industry specialist with Marsh Risk Consulting.  

Roth says she doesn't like kitchen floor mats, noting that they can become trip hazards and mats can slide if they and the floor area beneath them are poorly maintained. However, mats do prevent accidents in high-traffic areas where water might puddle after a floor has been cleaned, she adds.

OWNERS OPINE

Two veteran restaurant owners say they have minimized slip-and-fall claims by following most of the recommendations suggested by loss-control experts.

Keith Kazanova, who co-owns five McDonald's franchises in Aurora, Ill., and Doug Levy, who owns Feast, a fine-dining restaurant in Tucson, Ariz., both say they analyzed the friction factors of floors in their new establishments. 

Kazanova, a franchisee for 20 years, built three of his five restaurants; Levy moved his restaurant, which he opened nearly 13 years ago, into a new building in 2010.

Neither restaurant owner requires employees to wear slip-resistant shoes, but both strongly recommend that workers do so.  

Levy does use mats in food-preparation areas to guard against a slippery floor, should food particles fall from workstations.

THE STRAIN OF IT ALL

The second-most common cause of loss for restaurants is employee sprains and strains.

The way in which a restaurant stores its inventory is critical in preventing injuries, Merendino says. Many occur when employees are fishing out boxes crammed into tight areas, stretching for items perched atop high stacks or bending to lift boxes off floors.

Restaurants can significantly reduce this risk by transitioning to a just-in-time delivery system, Merendino says. Less inventory means it all could be stored on racks, and employees would not have to reach higher than their shoulders or lower than their knees for items.

However materials are stored, employees should be trained on proper lifting techniques, says Walter Oswald, director of claims services at broker Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. 

And since high employee turnover is a hallmark of the restaurant industry, training must be ongoing, advises Scott Erhardt, a vice president and the Restaurant Program administrator at Gallagher. 

FIRE: LOW FREQUENCY, SUPER SEVERITY

While fire can cause huge losses, “the incidence of a major fire, in our experience, is not great,” notes Marsh's Pohlmann. That's because new restaurant buildings must comply with stricter fire codes, and many existing facilities have been brought into compliance with new regulations, he explains.

“It's the older restaurants that haven't been brought up to code that pose the greatest fire risk,” he notes. 

Still, even at new and updated facilities, grease fires ignite and cause serious damage. Merendino notes that 60 percent of the roughly 6,000 U.S. restaurant fires in 2011 were traceable to deep fryers and grills. 

Many flare-ups can be extinguished either by flipping fryer lids closed or dousing flames with foam from a nearby portable extinguisher, Pohlmann says.  If a flare-up is intense, the fire-suppression system positioned in the fryer or grill vent should activate automatically and extinguish the blaze.

Some restaurants, however, do not routinely inspect and properly maintain their fire-suppression systems. That's a critical error, as grease can splatter into the system and jam parts, preventing the system from activating, Pohlmann explains.

Merendino recommends having annual inspections conducted at a minimum.

Additionally, employees or owners at some restaurants remove the caps covering system spray nozzles, mistakenly believing the caps would prevent the fire-extinguishing chemicals from dispersing, Pohlmann says. The caps, though, prevent grease from clogging the nozzles and are easily blown off by the pressure in the system when it activates.

Feast inspects its system annually, and Kazanova inspects his restaurants' systems quarterly. 

Many kitchen fires also are sparked by poorly maintained electrical outlets, deteriorated extension cords and malfunctioning circuit-breaker panels overloaded by excessive use of extension cords, Polhmann says. 

NEW DISH: CYBER

An emerging peril that few restaurant owners have addressed thus far is Cyber Liability.

“A minority of restaurants are buying the coverage, even though it is a very big exposure for them,” Travelers' Denker says.

Adds Merendino: “Anyone with employees or customers has exposure to being breached.”

On the advice of his agent, Nicole Lash at the American Family Insurance Agency in Peru, Ill. (and because the coverage was inexpensive, he says), Kazanova first purchased Cyber Liability coverage last year and likely will again this year.