How does leasing vs purchasing restaurant equipment work to the benefit of a food business?
Restaurant related companies get quite a bit of business on a daily basis, because the right niche can bring in a wide variety of customers. Some restaurants focus on quick meals and drinks for customers who are more interested in grab and go, while others are built more for family outings.
Some restaurants are even designed to be more high-class or more suited for a lunch or a breakfast versus dinner. However your restaurant is set up, you want to be able to bring in as many customers as possible on a daily basis.
A good restaurant is built off of providing an optimal service, and there are quite a few factors to your restaurant’s service. However, it’s easy to see that the bottom line to a restaurant business is the quality and speed of food served.
This heavily depends on both the quality of the equipment you own and the amount of equipment you have. As long as your kitchen is equipped to handle your amount of business proficiently, you’ll have no issue, but this equipment is expensive.
Getting Efficient, Inexpensive Equipment for your Restaurant
How can businesses get good equipment in their restaurant? The answer is usually either an equipment lease or through purchasing your equipment.
They both have their own advantages and disadvantages and are structured completely differently depending on your needs. For example, purchasing has some up-front buying benefits, but when you own equipment, you take on all of the responsibility that goes with it.
On the other hand, an equipment lease breaks up your payments into monthly fees, but you don’t own the equipment. Instead, you rent the equipment from the leasing company for a pre-determined contract period, avoiding dealing with all of the potential downsides of ownership.
There are pros and cons to leasing vs purchasing restaurant equipment, but which of the two would be better for a business? Generally, the answer is both depending on the equipment need; many businesses do purchase some of their hardware.
Leasing vs Purchasing Restaurant Equipment
Inexpensive equipment with high longevity is very easy to purchase for your business for a host of reasons. Not only do you not have to worry about the equipment giving you issues for a long time, but purchasing and replacing the equipment is ridiculously easy.
Ignoring the fact that the equipment is cheap, your equipment can be claimed as a business asset, meaning you get some funding when purchasing that equipment and saving you even more money. Plus, when the equipment does break down in five to ten years, the replacement is easy, and you got more than your money’s worth.
Purchasing becomes an issue when you’re dealing with capital equipment, because that kind of equipment is tough to buy and doesn’t last as long. Once that equipment begins breaking down, you’re in a situation financially and have to pay to replace your hardware.
On the other hand, leasing equipment is advantageous when handling the responsibility of owning equipment is too taxing. With an equipment lease, you pay a flat monthly rate for the benefit of always having equipment in your business.
That means broken equipment is repaired for you without you having to pay to replace it, and the overall lease setup is much more manageable for a business financially. Expensive equipment is tough to buy, but with a lease the payments are broken up and much easier to handle.
Leasing has tax benefits as well, essentially putting money in your pocket on a yearly basis depending on the tax setup that year.
Leasing also means you can get upgrades on equipment over time, meaning you always have good, welling-running equipment in your business. To learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of leasing vs purchasing restaurant equipment, click here.