What the first restaurant has to show
Nobody lends against a restaurant that does not exist. The application is the first one's last six to twelve months: card settlements, cash deposits, the trend. A restaurant depositing $90,000 a month with a flat or rising line is a strong file for a second; one whose deposits are drifting down is being asked why the answer to a slowing first location is a second one.
Two years of returns opens the bank and SBA route, which is cheaper and takes weeks to months. Under that, revenue-based funders and equipment lenders are the realistic sources, they fund in days, and they cost more. If the lease you want is available now and the landlord will not hold it, the honest comparison is the price of fast money against losing the site.
Split by what the money buys
The hood and fire suppression, the cooking line, the walk-in, the dish machine, the POS: equipment. Financed over three to seven years with the equipment as security, the vendor paid directly, used units from a dealer welcome. This is the cheap money, and a second restaurant can put a large share of its opening cost here.
The buildout, the architect, the health and building permits, the liquor license (which in some cities is itself a six-figure asset with its own lenders), the opening inventory, the signage, the first hires' training weeks, and the rent and payroll for the months before the room fills: working capital. A line of credit is the ideal shape — drawn as invoices arrive, repaid as the new site's revenue lands. A term loan is the simpler alternative.
The ramp is where second restaurants fail
A new restaurant does not open at the first one's volume. Three to six months of a half-full room at full rent and full staff is the normal case, and it is the number most opening budgets leave out. Write it down: six months of the new site's rent and payroll, minus the revenue you honestly expect in each of those months, is the ramp. Fund it separately and explicitly, or the first restaurant's cash funds it quietly until both are short.
Owners who opened a second location and kept both describe the same discipline: the first restaurant's account never paid the second's bills. The second had its own line, its own budget, and its own date by which it had to carry itself.
What makes the application strong
A signed or near-signed lease. The first restaurant's statements with the trend visible. A kitchen equipment quote from the vendor. A one-page opening budget split into equipment, buildout and ramp. And a chef and a general manager named, not planned. An underwriter reading those five things is reading an operator, and operators get funded.