Restaurant owners: Would you start with a food truck or a brick-and-mortar in our situation? Are we undercapitalized?
This is a throwaway account, but this is a real story involving two broke but passionate about becoming our own bosses seeking help from entrepreneurs. Thank you so much in advance for all your contributions & input.
My business partner (25F) and I (26F) have worked in Seattle’s restaurant industry for almost 9 years, doing everything from line cooking, serving, supervising, and managing, mostly in Asian restaurants. We’ve even worked in a food truck before. Around mid-2025, we decided we seriously wanted to open our own small Japanese ramen restaurant because we were tired of overworking for other people and wanted to build something for ourselves.
The challenge is that neither of us are U.S. citizens, although we both legally work here, so SBA loans are not an option for us. My partner has around $110k in savings, while I unfortunately have debt and very little savings myself. Our original plan was to combine her savings with roughly another $90k from lenders and start with around $200k total.
We’ve spent months building a detailed business plan with 3-year financial projections, supplier research, cost sheets, operations planning, and marketing ideas. We’ve also been working with multiple brokers since January, looking for restaurant spaces around downtown(high bar life activity ) because we strongly believe there’s potential for ramen and comfort food late into the night(3AM). We specifically need a space with a Type 1 hood because we plan to make broths and many dishes from scratch.
Recently, loan officers told us that we likely don’t have enough collateral to qualify for the amount we’re requesting because the equipment we plan to purchase would be our main asset. Because of that, we started exploring buying out an existing restaurant business to reduce startup and renovation costs and potentially strengthen our loan position.
Now we feel stuck. We still strongly want a brick-and-mortar ramen shop, but we’re seeing many restaurants close, and we’re questioning whether we should instead start with a food truck( easy without a loan), pop-ups, farmers markets, or small events first to build more capital and proof of concept. The issue is that both of us are already working multiple jobs while handling all the business planning, and we also have visa-related time pressure, so we feel like time is limited. We know working in a restaurant and owning one is a completely different story, and we know we will be working 100 hours a week each. The current economy and instability in inventory/ shipments might create more obstacles.
We do have a business coach who has been very supportive and says our business plan is strong, but they also mentioned that our startup capital may still be low for Seattle restaurant standards.
For people who have opened restaurants or food trucks before:
* Would you continue pursuing a brick-and-mortar location in this situation?
* Would buying out an existing restaurant be smarter than building from scratch?
* Is starting with a food truck or pop-up actually the safer path financially?
* How much startup capital did you realistically need before opening?
* Are we being unrealistic trying to open in Seattle with our current position?