How one insurance maven cracked the barrel of brewery insurance

One insurance head has managed to blend her passion for insurance and beer

How one insurance maven cracked the barrel of brewery insurance

Insurance News

By Heather Turner

There is no doubt that America’s craft brewery industry is thriving – in 2015, there were over 4,200 craft, large non-craft and other non-craft breweries scattered around the US, according to the Brewers Association. Although the art of brewing has been around for centuries, it was only in recent decades that the insurance space caught up with this booming industry.

Malena Farrell heads CedarBrew Insurance, the all-women run agency that focuses solely on servicing the alcoholic beverage industry, and beer and insurance are a few of her greatest passions.


“In my opinion, this is the least boring industry ever. We can have two accounts that look and sound similar, but that end up being on completely opposite ends of the spectrum,” she says. “One day we can be placing insurance for a small, five-barrel system start-up brewery, and the next we could we working with a multi-national conglomerate. It is never the same.”

It all started when Farrell looked over the insurance policy placed for a friend’s small brewery, and what she found alarmed her.

“I found out that the agent rated his business as a restaurant. There was no coverage for the actual manufacturing process or the product itself. I started talking to different people within the industry and realized that there were few people who had any idea what to do with a brewery,” Farrell says.

That’s when she began working with different insurance companies to get appropriate programs in place that covered the unique exposures breweries face. Today, CedarBrew writes insurance coverage for local, regional and national craft breweries, microbreweries, brew pubs, nano-breweries and homebrew start-ups.

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As the brewing industry continues its boom, more and more insurance agents are eager to enter the space, capitalizing on the growing market. However, Farrell cautions against simply entering the business without putting in the efforts to learn the ins-and-outs of the brewing process and the risks involved.

“Unfortunately, some agents are not taking the time to learn the product and understand what brewers need,” she explains. “So we have done a lot of fixing of other people’s policies because we are running into the same problems.”
So, Farrell and her team remain involved with the industry, such as helping clients with picking yeast, or even brewing in their own office, to stay aware of the intricacies and risks faced during the entire brewing process.

“The biggest factor that sets up apart is that brewery owners can understand and see how genuine we are. We really love beer, and we really love the industry,” she says.


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Breweries face sobering cyber threat

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