Decide repair or replace before you decide anything about money
A commercial convection oven or a fryer lasts about ten to fifteen years with service. A hood and its exhaust system longer, but a fire-suppression failure means the line is closed by code until it is fixed, whatever it costs.
The question the tech will help you answer is age against cost. A $1,800 igniter and control board on a three-year-old oven is a repair. The same bill on a twelve-year-old one is a down payment on a problem that is coming back. The forums where operators compare notes settle on the same rough rule: over half the cost of new, on a unit past two-thirds of its expected life, replace.
Get that answer first, because it decides which product you are applying for, and applying for the wrong one costs real money.
Repair: working capital, fast and short
A repair invoice is paid with a working capital loan or a cash advance sized to your deposits. Decision in about a day, money in one to three business days. Card-heavy restaurants underwrite easily because settlements are the cleanest deposit pattern there is.
Amounts run half to one and a half times a month's deposits, which for a restaurant depositing $50,000 a month means offers from about $25,000. Most single-unit repairs are a fraction of that; borrow what the invoice says, not what the offer says.
Replacement: equipment financing, slower by two days and cheaper by a lot
A new oven, fryer bank, or hood package is an asset the lender can value and recover, so it finances as equipment over three to seven years at pricing that approaches a bank's. The vendor is usually paid directly, and used units from a dealer are fine.
It takes two to five business days rather than one to three, because the lender wants the quote and the serial numbers. In exchange, a $15,000 replacement costs a fraction in financing of what the same $15,000 costs as a six-month advance.
A hood and fire-suppression replacement is the one case where speed can override price: if the line is closed, every day is a day of zero. Fund the interim with working capital if you have to and refinance the unit as equipment once it is installed.
What a bad week does to your file, and what to do about it
A closed line shows up as a dip in the deposits. Apply the same week rather than next month, so the dip is in the current week and not the underwriter's sample.
Attach the quote. A funder reading a $6,000 repair invoice next to a $6,000 request understands the file in one glance. Round numbers with no explanation are what get questioned.