Catering equipment finance is the quiet reason a lot of hospitality businesses get through December in one piece. For most venues, Christmas is not won in December. It is won in October, when the bookings start landing and you work out whether the kitchen you have can actually cope with the kitchen you need.
Every year we speak to restaurants, bars, pubs and cafés in the same position. The fryer is on its last legs, the walk-in is struggling, the coffee machine is holding up service at the exact moment the queue is out of the door. The equipment is not quite broken enough to justify emptying the bank account, but it is nowhere near reliable enough to carry the busiest eight weeks of the year.
Why October is the month to deal with it
There are three practical reasons the decision cannot wait until late November.
The first is lead time. Commercial catering equipment is rarely off the shelf. Specified refrigeration, extraction and larger cooking lines can take weeks to arrive, and installation needs a slot when you are not trading flat out. Ordering in December usually means fitting in January, which misses the point entirely.
The second is cash. Q4 is when your outgoings climb before your takings do. Extra stock, extra staff, extra hours. Spending a five-figure sum on equipment in the same month you are funding all of that is the kind of decision that creates problems in February.
The third is installer availability. The engineers who fit commercial kitchens are busy with everyone else who left it late.
What catering equipment finance typically covers
The list changes with the type of venue, but the pattern is consistent. Ahead of the festive season we most often arrange funding for:
A single agreement can usually cover a bundle of items rather than one application per machine, which keeps the paperwork and the monthly figure manageable. Our catering equipment finance page sets out the full range.
Spreading the cost across the season that pays for it
The argument for catering equipment finance on seasonal kit is straightforward. The equipment earns across the whole year, so it makes sense for the cost to sit across the whole year too, rather than landing in one lump in the month you can least afford it.
A new combi oven bought outright in November takes a large bite out of working capital at the exact point you need that capital for stock and wages. The same oven on a finance lease becomes a fixed monthly payment you can plan around, and the first few payments are covered by the trade the oven helps you serve.
Fixed payments also make budgeting honest. You know what leaves the account each month for the length of the agreement, whatever happens to interest rates in the meantime.
Finance lease or hire purchase
Both work for catering equipment, and the right one usually comes down to what you intend to do with the kit at the end.
A finance lease is the more popular route in hospitality. You use the equipment throughout the agreement and make fixed monthly payments, and the payments are normally treated as a business operating expense. It suits anything you expect to upgrade in a few years, which covers most front of house equipment and lighter kitchen kit.
Hire purchase suits the heavier, longer-lived items you intend to keep. Extraction systems, built-in refrigeration and serious cooking lines tend to fall into this group. You pay in fixed instalments and own the asset at the end, and capital allowances may be available.
If you are not sure which fits, that is a conversation worth having before you place the order rather than after.
What if something fails mid-season
It happens every December. A walk-in gives up the week before Christmas, or the glasswasher floods on the busiest Saturday of the year.
Emergency replacements are the worst possible time to be making a funding decision, because the pressure pushes businesses into paying whatever is quickest. Having catering equipment finance already understood, with a lender decision in hand, means a replacement becomes a phone call rather than a crisis. Decisions on straightforward applications typically come back within 24 hours, and in many cases considerably faster.
Can newer businesses get catering equipment finance
Yes, and this is worth saying clearly because a lot of operators assume otherwise after a conversation with their bank.
High street lenders generally want two or three years of filed accounts. A large share of hospitality businesses, particularly independents that opened in the last couple of years, simply cannot produce that. Specialist lenders look at the wider picture instead: the experience of the operator, the trading the business is actually doing, the quality and resale value of the asset itself, and the strength of the plan. Our start-up funding page covers how that works.
As a credit broker with access to over 200 lenders, we are looking across the whole market rather than for a single yes or no.
How the process runs
Tell us what you want to finance, roughly what it costs and a little about the business. That part takes about ten minutes. We then approach the lenders most likely to suit your situation, come back with the options, and once you choose, the paperwork is signed online. Funds usually go to the supplier so the order can be placed.
You can run your own figures first with our online calculator, and our Lollo Rossa Italia and Why Not Bar and Lounge case studies show how it has worked for other venues.
Getting your kitchen ready
If there is a piece of equipment you already know will struggle through December, the cheapest time to deal with it is now, while you still have a choice about when and how. Leave it until it fails and both of those choices are made for you.
If catering equipment finance would take the pressure off this quarter, get in touch and we will talk through what you need and what it would look like monthly.
Talk To Us About Funding Your Next Purchase
Complete Leasing Solutions has been arranging business finance since 2004, with more than 30,000 completed transactions and a dedicated account manager on every deal. We work with a wide panel of UK lenders, so you get the right facility rather than whatever one bank happens to offer.
Tell us what you need and we will tell you honestly whether we can help, and what it is likely to cost.
A quick call to understand the asset, the budget and the timescale.
We match your requirement to the most suitable lender on our panel.
Paperwork handled, decision confirmed, and your supplier paid.