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The best equipment lessors offer excellent rates, fast funding, and flexible buyout options. Here are our picks for best equipment leases.
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Editor & Senior Staff Writer
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Commercial kitchens require a substantial capital investment in equipment. While some restaurants may prefer to buy outright, an equipment lease may be the better option in some cases. This is especially true when it comes to equipment that needs to be frequently replaced or upgraded.
If you’re getting your restaurant up and running, you may not have the time to independently research every vendor out there to determine their suitability. Why not leave that part to us? Here are a few solid commercial kitchen equipment financing options.
Learn More About Our Top Picks
| Company | Summary | Next StepsSummary |
|---|---|---|
Lendio
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National Business Capital
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US Business Funding
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Read more below to learn why we chose these options.
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Table of Contents
The best equipment lessors offer excellent rates, fast funding, and flexible buyout options. Here are our picks for best equipment leases for commercial kitchen equipment and more.
| Max Borrowing Amount | Rates | Time In Business | Credit Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lendio | $5 million | Starts at 7.5% | N/A | 520 |
| National Business Capital | $5 million | Varies by lender/product | 1 year | 580 |
| US Business Funding | $50 million | Starts at 3.5% | 6 months | Undisclosed |
Pros
Cons
Lendio is an aggregator of business financing that matches customers to the right financing from its network of over 75 business funders. Lendio’s partners offer a variety of business financing, including equipment leases and loans. With one simple application, Lendio presents you with offers suited to your needs, saving you the work of finding financing on your own.
Lendio will run a soft credit check on you during this process, but this will not affect your credit score. According to Lendio’s customer service agreement, the process of presenting you with offers should take no longer than 72 hours. Once approved, you can be funded in as little as 24 hours.
Pros
Cons
National Business Capital is another lending marketplace that allows businesses to apply to multiple funders through a single application.
In addition, National Business Capital will assign you an advisor to help maximize your chances of finding a match within their network. This can be very helpful for businesses who haven’t previously used an aggregator to find a lease.
Get Started With National Business Capital
Pros
Cons
Businesses looking for short-term equipment leasing options should give US Business Funding a close look. With a wide variety of buyout options, US Business Funding allows businesses to easily upgrade or refinance equipment as needed.
Additionally, US Business Funding is willing to work with businesses as young as six months old, a market segment that can often struggle to find equipment financing.
Get Started With US Business Funding
We spend hours researching and evaluating each business loan and funding product that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing special emphasis on key characteristics to generate our ratings.
When rating lenders and funding providers, we use a 31-point rubric that looks at rates and fees, services, eligibility requirements, application, sales and advertising transparency, customer service, and user reviews. We weigh each section differently to calculate the total star rating. This rubric is applied to traditional term loans, as well as short-term loans, start-up loans, lines of credit, online lending products, merchant cash advances, and equipment financing products.
Each section is further broken down into granular, weighted subsections, in which we examine specific attributes like terms lengths, conditions of repayment, credit score and revenue requirements, ease of application, length of time to funding, the ethics involved in promoting the lending product, customer support, and the overall reputation of the lender or funding provider.
Read more about how we rate small business lenders.
When considering your equipment lease options, it’s important to fully understand your choices.
While equipment loans work pretty much like any other type of loan, equipment leases merit some further explanation. With an equipment lease, you’re paying a fee to borrow the equipment from the lessor (the leasing company) as opposed to paying down a loan to purchase the equipment. At the end of your lease, you generally must return the equipment to the lessor, though you may be offered the option of purchasing the equipment after your lease term ends.
This arrangement carries with it several advantages:
However, it’s worth noting that leases tend to carry larger interest rates than loans, so you may end up paying more for your equipment overall than with a loan.
Common types of equipment leases offered by lessors include:
Obviously, the biggest cost of your equipment will be the price tag of the refrigerator, mixer, or whatever item you are financing. Unfortunately, with equipment financing, you’ll be incurring some additional charges:
Hopefully, you now have a better sense of how you can go about leasing kitchen equipment. Restaurant equipment leasing is a complex field to navigate, but financing is not hard to get if you know where to look and have a good idea of what you can afford in terms of lease payments or loan repayments.
Once you do find a good leasing company or lender, make sure you read your contract or lease agreement very carefully.
Not sure a lease is the best option? Check out our picks for best small business loans and best equipment financing companies.
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The vendors that appear on this list were chosen by subject matter experts on the basis of product quality, wide usage and availability, and positive reputation.
Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews. Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. The rating of this company or service is based on the author’s expert opinion and analysis of the product, and assessed and seconded by another subject matter expert on staff before publication. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are not influenced by affiliate partnerships.
Our unbiased reviews and content are supported in part by affiliate partnerships, and we adhere to strict guidelines to preserve editorial integrity. The editorial content on this page is not provided by any of the companies mentioned and has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone.
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