What Should Be on a Vending Company's Certificate of Insurance?

If you are the person who has to collect paperwork before a vendor is allowed to install anything, this page is for you. It is not legal or insurance advice. It is a plain description of what a Certificate of Insurance is, and what to actually look at on the one you are handed.

What the document is

A Certificate of Insurance, usually called a COI, is a one page summary issued by an insurance agent confirming that a business holds specific coverage on a specific date. It is a summary, not the policy itself.

You are asking for it for one reason. An outside company is going to place equipment in your building, run electrical load, bring in food, and send people through your space on a repeating schedule. If something goes wrong, you want to know whose insurance responds.

The five things to actually check

1. The named insured matches the legal entity you are contracting with. Operators frequently trade under a name that is not their registered entity. The certificate should show the same legal name that will appear on your agreement and on their W-9. A mismatch is usually harmless paperwork drift, but it is worth resolving before signing rather than after an incident.

2. Your business is listed as an additional insured. This is the part people miss. A certificate proving the operator has coverage is not the same as your business being covered under it. Ask specifically for your business to be named as an additional insured, and check that the name is spelled the way your entity is registered.

3. General liability limits. You will typically see two numbers, a per occurrence limit and an aggregate limit. Per occurrence is the ceiling for a single incident. Aggregate is the ceiling across the whole policy period. Many employers set a required minimum here as policy. If yours does, state the number in your request rather than accepting whatever arrives.

4. The dates. A certificate is a snapshot. Check the policy period covers the date the equipment goes in, and diary the expiry so you can ask for a renewed one. An operator on a long relationship should be sending you an updated certificate each year without being chased.

5. Workers’ compensation, if their people are in your building. This matters more than most host locations realize. If a route driver is injured on your premises and the operator carries no workers’ compensation coverage, the question of who is responsible gets complicated. Utah employers are generally required to carry it for employees, but do not assume, ask.

Two related requests worth making at the same time

While you are asking, ask for these as well. They cost the operator nothing and they tell you a great deal.

A W-9. Standard, routine, and it confirms the legal entity and tax identification you will be paying or contracting with.

Proof the business is active and in good standing. In Utah you can check registration status yourself through the Division of Corporations. It takes a minute, and it filters out anyone operating without a real entity behind them.

Vending is an easy category to operate informally in. Utah does not require a statewide vending operator’s license, so there is no single credential that proves an operator is legitimate. That absence is exactly why these ordinary documents carry the weight.

One thing you can check without asking anyone

Utah requires vending operators to hold a sales tax license and to display the license number on the machine itself. The sticker reads along the lines of “This machine is operated under Utah Sales Tax License No.” followed by a number.

Go look at a machine from any operator you are considering. If that notice is present and current, someone is handling the compliance basics. If it is missing across their estate, ask why before you ask anything else.

What we do

We produce a Certificate of Insurance naming your business as an additional insured on request, along with a W-9 and current registration, before anything is installed. We would rather hand it over at the start than be asked for it after a problem.

The specific limits, and how they line up with whatever your policy requires, we will put in writing for your location rather than publish as a number on a web page. Numbers on a marketing page go stale, and a stale insurance number is worse than none.

Ask us, and you will have the document.

The rest of the checklist is in the buyer’s guide, including the question about who actually repairs the equipment, which usually matters more day to day than anything on the certificate.