The walk-in cooler died. Where does a restaurant get money today?

A walk-in holds temperature for roughly four to eight hours with the door shut. After that, product starts crossing the line and the health department's view of your inventory changes. No funder in the country moves inside that window, and one that says it does is not being straight with you.

So the order is: door shut, tech called, a refrigerated trailer or a neighbor's cooler space arranged for the product that will not survive. Refrigeration rental companies exist in every city for exactly this and will usually invoice rather than demand payment up front.

The money conversation starts once you know whether it is a compressor, a condenser, an evaporator fan, or a box that has reached the end of its life. Those are very different amounts, and they fit different products.

A compressor replacement on a walk-in generally lands between $2,500 and $9,000 installed depending on size and whether it is a remote or self-contained unit. A condenser or a fan motor is less. That is a repair bill, and a repair bill is paid with working capital: a short-term loan or a cash advance sized to your deposits, decided in about a day, funded in one to three business days.

A whole new walk-in — box, panels, refrigeration package, installation — is a different order of money and a different product. It is an asset. Equipment financing secures itself on the unit, which is why it is priced closer to a bank loan and runs over three to seven years instead of months.

The mistake restaurants make under pressure is funding a $20,000 replacement with a six-month advance because the advance was fast. The advance is fast for the repair. For the replacement, ask for equipment terms and accept two extra days.

Three to six months of business bank statements, with card settlements front and center. Restaurants are a category some banks decline as a class; revenue-based funders do the opposite, because card revenue is the easiest deposit pattern in the world to underwrite.

Amounts typically run half to one and a half times one month's deposits. A restaurant depositing $60,000 a month can expect offers from roughly $30,000 up — more than enough for any compressor and most replacement boxes.

The week of the breakdown will show in the statements if you wait a month to apply. Do not wait. Apply the same week, attach the repair quote, and the dip explains itself.

A restaurant runs on equipment that fails without warning, and every one of those failures is a four-hour problem. The answer to the second one should not be another emergency application.

A business line of credit sits open at no cost until it is drawn. It is the hardest of the four products to qualify for and takes longer to set up — which is why the time to apply is a good month, not the morning the walk-in stops humming.