Café fit-out and commercial coffee machine in Parramatta

The situation

Two operators with an existing successful café signed a lease on a second site near Parramatta Square. They needed $96,000 covering shopfit, joinery, a cool room, a three-group commercial coffee machine and a point-of-sale system. Most of that spend was soft fit-out with limited resale value, which several lenders would not fund without property security they did not want to provide.

What we did

We separated the spend into categories rather than presenting a single lump sum. The coffee machine, cool room and POS were financeable as identifiable equipment; the joinery and shopfit needed a lender with genuine fit-out appetite. We supported it with two years of trading figures from the first site, the signed lease, and supplier quotes broken down item by item so the financier could see exactly what it was funding.

The outcome

Approved as a single facility over 48 months with a small deposit contributed by the operators. Funds were released against supplier tax invoices as the fit-out progressed, so the business was not paying interest on the full amount from day one. The site opened on schedule and the monthly repayment was set below the contribution the operators had modelled from the second location, leaving headroom in the first few trading months.