When do restaurants usually need working capital?

Often during slow seasons, before a busy period when costs rise ahead of sales, or after an unexpected expense.

What if I need less than $25,000?

Our range starts at $25,000. For a smaller gap, a supplier payment arrangement may be more suitable.

How is working capital different from a line of credit?

Working capital covers a defined gap; a line is for repeated draws.

Does the application affect my credit?

It uses a soft pull and does not.

Working Capital for Texas Restaurants

The four bills that never skip a week

Bill	When it lands	What makes it hard
Payroll	Weekly or every two weeks	Due even after a slow stretch
Food and beverage suppliers	Short terms, several times a week	Bought before the dishes are sold
Rent and utilities	Monthly	Fixed, whatever the traffic
Sales tax and payroll taxes	Monthly or quarterly	Collected from customers, but owed to the state on a schedule

Sales tax filers are told by the Texas Comptroller whether to file monthly or quarterly, and employers owe quarterly unemployment wage reports and taxes by the last day of the month after each quarter ends.

Texas seasonality, in general terms

Restaurants in Texas face swings: heat that keeps patio diners away in peak summer, cold snaps that shut dining rooms, weekend peaks, school and holiday calendars, and in coastal areas, hurricane season, which runs June 1 to November 30. None of these moves the fixed costs.

Working capital is most useful when it is tied to a specific swing and sized to it, and least useful when it becomes a constant crutch.

A simple way to size the request

Take your three most challenging weeks from the last year and add up the shortfall in each: payroll, suppliers, rent and taxes minus the sales that week. Take the biggest of the three. That is a better starting figure than the maximum available.

For illustration only: if the worst week left a $14,000 hole and the second worst left $9,000, the answer is about the larger one plus a modest buffer, not a number several times larger. These are made-up figures.

Common mistakes when sizing

Borrowing for the busiest week rather than the typical shortfall.
Forgetting taxes that are collected from customers but owed later.
Counting expected sales as if they were already in the bank.
Using short-term money for a long-lived purchase such as a kitchen build-out.

Each mistake has the same cure: write the numbers down, week by week, before asking for money.

Talking to suppliers first

Before borrowing, call your main food and beverage suppliers. Many will extend terms for a reliable customer, and a few extra days on a large weekly order can ease a tight stretch at no cost. Working capital then covers whatever the supplier cannot. Keeping suppliers informed also protects the relationship if a delivery payment is late, which matters more than any single week's savings.

The practical details

We fund from $25,000 to $5,000,000, and some applicants are funded in as little as 24 hours. The application takes about five minutes and uses a soft credit pull. Sole proprietors can apply. Offers carry their own terms, which are worth reading before you accept.