The association plans to announce Friday, at its annual convention in Chicago, a website and a menu of insurance plans in Pennsylvania and Colorado and then expand into California, Texas, Florida, Illinois and several other states within a year.
"This is a business issue for the restaurant industry," said Dawn Sweeney, chief executive of the influential restaurant group, which represents about 380,000 employers nationwide.
"Because of the narrow profit margins of the restaurant business, it has been an ongoing real challenge for our industry to find affordable [insurance] products they could offer to employees," Sweeney said.
Sweeney, who began the push to create an insurance partnership more than two years ago, said the association's members had identified healthcare as a top issue of concern.
