A really marvelous example of financial engineering, via email: https://inkind.com/ It's "0%* interest loans for restaurants" and all of the magic is in the asterisk.
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This is an extension on that model: If you owned a functioning pizza restauraunt, you would be able to produce pizzas into the future. But you do not, currently, because of lack of some expensive wood-fired furnace. Traditionally, this is the point where you get a bank loan.
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For a variety of reasons, banks have pulled back from that sort of lending, so InKind gives you this proposition: You know those future pizzas? We are going to securitize them for you. We are then going to buy them from you, at a number below pizza par but above marginal cost.
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We will then sell those securitized pizzas to the happy customers your effective pizza-producing operation is sure to generate, at a smaller discount to pizza par than we bought from you. Some of them will be redeemed for actual pizza.
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I have no idea whether this will actually work or not, but the person who emailed it to me said "This seems like very your sort of thing" and, Internets, this is very my sort of thing.
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I particularly like their packaging for House Accounts, which feel to me like something basically every restauraunt with regulars should have available in some form or another. https://www.inkind.com/house-accounts
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House accounts, broadly, enable the transaction "You could pay me $10 for a burger or you could pay me $1,000 for 100 burgers. What do I need to do to get you to pick option #2?" I've only ever had one at a tiny bar in Gifu but they're such a magic UX.
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(For folks who have never had this interaction before: "Your total for today is $56.80, Patrick. Should I charge your account?" "Yes." "OK see you next time!" (plus optionally a reminder of what the remaining balance is) )
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("Why would a tiny bar in Japan offer that and what do their clients get from it?" Because businesses broadly benefit from having cash flow earlier, because that bar expects to be in business for 40+ years, and because it announces to client's table "He's a regular here.")
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("Why would a client want you to announce to their table that you were a regular at the hip bar?" Well you might have a date or business partner at the table who you were trying to impress and, prior to Instagram, this was a useful way to have hip waitstaff say "He's got taste")
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End of conversation
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