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A break-in at your restaurant doesn't cost what disappears from the till — that's usually the smallest number on the bill. The real figure sits in the insurance excess, the days the venue stays shut, the stock you lose if the freezer loses power, and the higher premium you pay for years afterwards.
Your venue sits empty, locked, with drink stock, equipment and a till behind a door nobody is watching, for at least eight hours every night. That isn't an unusual risk — it's just how a restaurant works — but it's a risk almost no owner has ever priced out in actual euros. This article covers the theft the staff-theft piece on this site doesn't, and that cybersecurity doesn't touch either: someone forcing a door at 3 a.m. while the building is empty.
That distinction isn't cosmetic. Staff theft is an internal control problem, with a fix that lives in your rota and your till procedure. A break-in is an external risk with a completely different bill: no cash discrepancy to reconstruct, but a forced door, an insurer's assessor, and an excess you pay regardless of what was taken.
Most owners who do think about it get the size wrong. They picture what's in the till — usually the smallest amount on the whole bill, precisely because emptying the till overnight is now the norm — and forget the excess, the days of revenue lost, and the stock that spoils if a freezer loses power during the break-in. None of that shows up on an insurance leaflet.
This article puts those seven numbers side by side: what typically gets stolen, what repairs cost, what your excess is, what's insured and what isn't, what spoilage costs, what closed days cost, and whether an alarm system pays for itself. A calculator further down lets you swap in your own venue's numbers instead of the worked example below.
Why 'we're insured' doesn't mean what you think it means
A hospitality policy with burglary cover feels like a solved problem: something happens, the insurer pays, done. In practice you pay the excess yourself on every single claim first — in Belgian and Dutch hospitality policies that typically runs close to €250 per claim — and that's still the most predictable part of the bill.
The less predictable part is what a standard policy doesn't cover. An ordinary contents or theft policy pays out for what's broken or stolen; it rarely automatically covers the revenue you lose while the venue is shut for repairs and an assessor's visit. That needs a separate clause — business interruption or loss-of-revenue cover — that most owners have never specifically asked about, precisely because they had no reason to until the door was already open.
And the bill doesn't stop at the incident itself. After a claim, the premium for the following years typically goes up, which makes actually 'being insured' for a break-in more expensive than the policy alone. That's this article's reassurance gap: being insured doesn't mean a break-in costs you nothing — it means the bill gets split into pieces, and one of those pieces is guaranteed to land on you.
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Every number below belongs to the same worked example — an independent restaurant with an average daily revenue of €1,943, a kitchen freezer and an ordinary hospitality policy — so the seven figures add up into one coherent story instead of seven separate guesses. Two graphics lay out the breakdown and the split visually; the calculator further down lets you repeat that same breakdown with your own numbers.
1. The cash in the till is the smallest number on the bill — and the only one most owners mention
Ask an owner what a break-in costs, and the first answer is almost always about the till. That's exactly the figure that should be smallest today: a venue that closes out the till every night and stores the float separately is left with a small amount in the drawer overnight at most — €126 in the worked example below.
That's not an accident, it's the first, cheapest security measure there is: leaving nothing worth forcing a lock for. A venue that leaves the till drawer shut and full overnight also gives a burglar one more reason to force it; a drawer left open and visibly empty removes that reason almost entirely.
The number itself isn't the problem. The problem is owners stopping their math here, as if the till were the whole bill. The next six numbers are all bigger.
2. What a break-in really costs, line by line
Line up the separate costs of one incident and the picture shifts immediately. In the worked example: €126 in cash, €3,990 in drink stock, small equipment and materials within reach, €683 to repair a forced door or window, €945 in spoilage if a freezer loses power, and €2,915 in lost revenue over one and a half days while the venue is shut for repairs and an assessor's visit. Together: €8,659 — nearly 69 times the amount that was in the till.
The graphic below lines up those five costs from largest to smallest. What stands out isn't which one is biggest — that's almost always the stolen stock and equipment — it's how small the till float is next to everything else. An owner who only thinks about 'what got stolen' misses two-thirds of the actual bill.
Five costs from the same worked example, largest to smallest — €8,659 in total.
The till float sits at the bottom on purpose: a venue that empties the till overnight automatically shifts the risk onto the four bigger costs.
3. The excess is the bill you always pay yourself
Every hospitality policy with burglary cover carries an excess: the amount you pay yourself before the insurer starts paying out, regardless of how large the damage turns out to be afterwards. In Belgian and Dutch hospitality policies that typically runs close to €250 per claim — a figure that looks small on its own, but it's the one part of the whole bill guaranteed to land on you, every single time.
That's why 'we're insured' is the wrong reassurance: being insured means the rest of the bill lands somewhere, not that there's no bill left. The excess is the small, predictable part; the next two numbers show where the larger, less predictable part actually ends up.
4. Insured and uninsured are not the same amount
Take the cash, the stolen goods, the repair and the spoilage together — €5,744 in the worked example — and subtract the excess: €5,481 is normally covered by an ordinary contents and theft policy. What's left is €3,178: the €263 excess plus the full €2,915 in revenue lost while the venue is shut. Together that's 37% of the €8,659 total — money a standard policy usually never touches.
The graphic below sets those two amounts side by side as one bar. The point isn't that insurance is worthless — 63% of this incident is covered — the point is that more than a third of the bill stays with you unless your policy specifically covers lost revenue. That's exactly the question most owners have never actually put to their broker.
Of the €8,659 in the worked example, after the excess is subtracted.
37% of this incident a standard policy usually never touches — mostly because lost revenue is a separate cover, not an automatic part of a contents policy.
5. A freezer that loses power is a second cost line, separate from what was stolen
A kitchen freezer losing power is already familiar territory on this site — equipment tends to fail on a Saturday, right when nobody's around to notice. A break-in adds a variant that has nothing to do with wear and tear: a door damaged during forced entry that no longer seals, a power box that gets hit, or simply a closed weekend right after the incident, with nobody there to catch the damage in time.
The worked example puts €945 against that — the value of the stock in the freezer at the moment power drops. That figure depends entirely on how much stock you hold and how long it takes someone to notice; a venue freshly stocked ahead of a closed weekend is the most exposed.
6. The days the venue stays shut cost more than the glass that needs replacing
A forced door doesn't get fixed between two services. Factor in a locksmith, a police report, and usually an insurer's assessor before the claim is even approved, and one and a half days is a realistic, if anything conservative, estimate. At an average daily revenue of €1,943, that's €2,915 — the largest or second-largest single line on the whole bill, and the one owners count least beforehand.
On top of that sits a cost that only becomes visible months later: after a claim, the premium for the following years typically rises. At a €1,418 annual premium and a 15% increase that holds for three years, that adds up to just over €630 in extra cost — a line nobody ever files under 'cost of the break-in,' but it belongs there all the same.
7. The question isn't the odds of a break-in — it's whether five years of protection costs less than one night
Nobody can state with certainty how likely a break-in at your specific venue is this year, and any figure claiming to is invented. What can be calculated: what five years of an alarm system, cameras and a proper safe instead of a till drawer costs, next to what a single incident already costs above.
A €1,260 installation plus €231 a year in monitoring comes to €2,415 over five years. Set that against the €8,659 for one incident above, and a single break-in costs nearly 3.6 times what five years of protection costs. That isn't a probability calculation, it's a straightforward comparison of two amounts — and it's why a decent lock and an alarm system aren't a luxury, they're the cheaper of the two options.
Put your own venue next to it
The worked example above is illustrative — your own till float, stock value, excess and daily revenue almost certainly differ. The calculator below repeats the exact same breakdown with your own venue's seven numbers.
Fill in what you leave in the till overnight, what drink stock and equipment sit within reach, what repairs and your excess cost, how much stock your freezer holds, and how many days and how much revenue you'd lose if the venue had to close. The calculator immediately splits the result into what's normally insured and what you pay regardless.
Break-in cost estimator
Seven fields, and the full breakdown from what's insured to what you pay yourself.
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This is a calculation model built on a realistic worked example, not a quote: your own policy, excess and revenue decide the real numbers for your venue.
Once your own 'paid yourself' figure is on screen, the next step is simple: call your insurer or broker and ask explicitly whether lost revenue after a break-in is covered, and what your excess actually is per claim — not per year. Both questions take five minutes and can meaningfully change the amount you pay yourself.
Then set your own 'total cost' figure next to what an alarm system, cameras and a safe cost. For most independent venues, that comparison favours securing the place — not because a break-in is certain to happen, but because the bill from one incident is usually bigger than a few years of protection.
What to do with this this week, this quarter and this year
Tackling everything at once works for nobody. This order works, because every step is cheap and prepares the next one.
This week — check what your policy actually covers
- Fill in the calculator above with your own venue's numbers.
- Call your insurer or broker and ask explicitly whether lost revenue after a break-in is covered — and if not, what it costs to add it.
- Ask for your excess per claim, not the general figure printed on the front page of the policy.
- Check that the float is stored separately every night and the till drawer is left empty and open overnight.
This quarter — close the gaps that are cheap to close
- Get three quotes for an alarm system with cameras, and set them against this article's numbers.
- Check the back door and the kitchen door separately — that's usually the weak point, not the front door customers see.
- Replace the overnight till drawer with a safe for float and valuables that can't go home every night.
- Write down who calls the police, who calls the insurer and who reopens the venue after an incident — a list nobody has to improvise in the moment.
This year — put it next to your other fixed costs
- Add the cost of security to your annual cash-flow plan, instead of treating it as a one-off expense.
- Review your premium a year after any claim — the increase is often temporary, but only if you ask.
- Set the total cost from this worked example next to the rest of your insurance cover to see whether your package still matches what's actually in the venue.
A locked door isn't security — a counted risk is
Most independent restaurants have exactly one security measure: a lock. That's not nothing, but it isn't enough to avoid an €8,659 bill the one time that lock doesn't hold — and it's exactly the kind of risk nobody calculates until it's already happened.
This article doesn't guarantee a break-in will never happen to your venue. It gives the seven numbers to see what's actually at stake, and the calculator to swap in your own venue's figures — so the next time someone asks 'are you insured?', the answer is more than 'yes, I think so.'
The smallest, cheapest first answer is already in step one: don't leave money overnight worth forcing a lock for. Everything after that — the excess, the lost-revenue cover, the alarm system — is a decision you make once, not one you improvise every night.