How Borderless Hospitality Grew to $80K a Month in Catering and Took a $50K Deal

All right. Most of us use dating apps to find love, but these entrepreneurs found love and then a business. Are you married?

No, we're partners.

Okay. Maybe marry soon? Possibly. Depends on how many catering. Yeah. Real question is who owns more equity?

Fifty fifty.

Ah, a business making lots of money here in Austin, Texas inside of this prep kitchen. The company is called Borderless Hospitality, catering for anything you need. What do you think your total sales in 2026 will be?

I think we're gonna hit a million.

We're looking for around 50,000 and that would drive growing our workforce and growing the critical pieces of the kitchen.

The question is, where's this money gonna come from? That's where I come in. If I fall in love with their vision, I'll invest on the spot.

How are you guys? Good. How are you? Good. Good. Good. My name is Nathan.

Destiny.

Destiny, really nice to meet you.

Nice to

meet Nathan, I'm Brett. Brett, good to meet you. Good meet you as well. So where are we standing? Give us some context here in Austin.

So we're in the lobby of Prep ATX, commercial kitchens. And so we're caterers. Yeah. We cater all sorts of events. Our daily bread and butter is corporate events. We do weddings, we do happy hours, we do birthday parties. Basically, if you have an event that needs food, we can help you.

So

we sell is yeses. So what is... How'd you come up with the name? Like if someone wants Chinese food but someone else wants a burger, you just say yes to everything or how Say does that to everything. Yep. What's the food you do the most?

I would say our best seller is Tex Mex. We are in Austin. We sell a lot of taco bars. A lot of live fire taco bars has been our most popular. And then big hit this spring and summer has been our medicare and Tuscan menus. So it really depends on the client first and foremost, their dietary needs and accommodations that they need met as the first thing that I hit, and we source locally as much as possible Okay. And go from there.

If someone said though, came in and said, I want an order of a specialty pig hoof menu sourced ingredients from Indonesia, and I need a 100 orders by Friday.

We can typically do it. As long as we can get it on time. We did a wild boar bolognese for a wine tasting menu just a couple months ago.

So I'm just thinking about your supply chains. If someone calls in and order something super strange and they want it in a week, how do you get the supplies in time?

I get on the phone, find out where it needs to come from and how quickly I can get it. If we can't get exactly what they're saying, you know, they want it from Indonesia, I can't get it from Indonesia. I'm gonna find, some options for them until we get to that point.

Okay. So just make it happen. You're yes Yeah. How did you guys meet and what year did you officially launch the business?

So we met, four years ago. Time flies.

So 2022 is when you met.

Yes. It was one of your, like, aft dates. We met for tacos over lunch. We were both really busy. I was like, I think I can meet for lunch. And tacos are where it started, and tacos is where we keep going.

Hopefully where it ends.

Yeah. I hope it doesn't. Okay.

You guys are you're together? Are you married?

No. We're partners.

Okay. Maybe marry soon? Possibly. Depends on how many catering. Yeah.

Exactly. Weddings are expensive.

The real question is who owns more equity?

Fiftyfiftyfiftyfiftyfifty.

Ah, they said, okay. What if you guys disagree on something? Who breaks the tie? We're just

downright honest with one another, whether it be personal or whether it be business.

When did you craft the business idea? When was the first year?

So we've always talked about it from that very first date. I've always wanted my own. I've always worked for other people. And nine months ago, my on the side private catering got busier than my nine to five job, and we made the leap.

When was your first sale? What year?

Last year, nine months ago.

Okay. So 2025. So what happened between 2022 and 2025?

He was working operations and I was executive sales manager for a hospitality group here.

So you had full time jobs? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Have you quit those now? You're all in? Correct. Was that a nervous moment? Were you giving up, you know, a 6 figure salary or?

Yeah, very nervous. You know, you have rent to pay. We have, know, my stepdaughter, her daughter, 18 year old, you know, that lives with us. It was funny. Like, when I would be like, I don't know if we can do this. She's the one that's like, you know, if we don't do it now,

we're not gonna do it.

And then when she would say, I don't know if I wanna do this, I'm like, if we don't do it now, we're not gonna this. Right?

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We definitely had some buffer going into it. It was what made the decision a little bit easier. I think for him, I was seeing one of my private clients that I have. We do a wine tasting for Make A Wish Foundation for a private client, every year for the last five years. And I got a standing ovation. These 12 people sitting at this table saw what I saw in my food. And I think that's what gave him the courage to, like, this is what we need to be doing.

Is it expensive to start a company like this? Yes. So how much of your own money did you put in at the start to get it going?

We are now at $70,000 Okay. All in.

What does that go into? Is it kitchen equipment? Is it?

So it's a lot of lease. You know, real estate is not cheap in the city at all. Equipment, vans, rentals, staffing.

A kitchen like this, I mean, do you pay for your space? Do you have to pay for all the equipment when you move in or is it like plug and play?

So we have to provide all of our equipment. When we moved into our private suite, we got lucky and someone wanted to sell everything in their kitchen. We moved in and I think we were serving two days later.

YouTube, business with your partner can be good or bad. It's kind of depends. How many of you guys, think about your spouse right now? Could you guys survive in a business together? Let me know below. So this is the space. Now is this where you guys started? No. Okay. So where'd you start?

We started over in the shared portion where you just rented an hourly station.

And why did you need a space like that versus just doing it out of your home kitchen?

Illegal in the state of Texas. Yes. Yeah.

You can't have a home catering business? You can't. No. Interesting.

Yeah. You have to have a permitted facility.

You guys actually just shipped something out. Walk me through that order.

We just want or took second place at Burger Bash, Austin Burger Bash, a couple weeks ago. He had our burger there. He... We were his favorite. He reached out to me probably two days later and was like, hey. I'm having a corporate summer send off happy hour, at a brewery downtown. I want your burger on the menu.

Mhmm. What makes the burger so good? What's the secret ingredient?

It's a croissant burger. Were doing an event out at Luck, Willie Nelson's Ranch out at Luck Ranch, and, we had some croissants left over from another event we did. We had beef. We had, like, these items, and I was like, it's the last day we're gonna be here. Let's put a burger on the menu and do a special. We sold out in two hours. We had a burger influencer who told us it was the best burger he ever had. So we have not changed that recipe.

What month did you move into this space we're standing in?

January.

So about six months ago. First month sales, do you remember?

First month sales were 20,000.

Okay.

Since then we've grown 200% quarter over quarter.

Okay, so do that math for me. What do you, what will you do this month?

Month is a very busy month for us. We'll probably end around 80.

$80,000 in one month. It sounds like a lot of your business is this corporate sort of gig thing. I mean, that driving a lot of the growth?

Yeah, it's our bread and butter. It's what where we make the most money. So we have partnerships with some of the biggest tech industries our tech companies here in Austin. You know, we do monthly happy hours. She ordered, we're on a, you know, she texted me at 09:00 at night and it's like, hey, I need an order for 200 people tomorrow. We're in the talks with some other companies where they want to bring us on as their sole caterer. So we'll do their day to day, their big events.

So 80,000 of total sales in this month, how many individual like customers will that be to? Is it like two massive corporate clients?

We're on easy cater. So we have like our day to day catering. We're around seven to eight caterings a week right now.

What do you think? We're only halfway through the year, but what do you think your total sales in 2026 will be?

I think we're gonna hit a million.

You have to say this confidently. Yeah.

I I I mean, that is, I think, 800,000 conservatively, but I think we could hit a million.

How does it feel your first full year in business to potentially hit a million dollars of sales?

We said this... It's funny. We said this last Thanksgiving. If we don't hit a million dollars by the time we're done, we're not doing it right.

I like that. Put amp up the pressure a little bit. The confidence is

there and that's how we lay it out. Right? It's like I'm I'm gonna put this out and if we're not if we're not hitting this at this time, we're not doing something right.

And is it a good business model? Will you make profit on a million of sales or you break it?... Profitable. Okay. So how... What's like 10% profit margin? 30%?

Right now we're around 30% profit margin. We're about to bring on some more staff so that may fluctuate momentarily but that's just to keep up with the momentum.

Okay. So on 80,000 of monthly sales, you'll take to the bottom line something like 20 to $23,000 of profits. Correct. What do do with that? You buy a new baking machine? You reinvest it?

We reinvest it.

So what's the growth plan? How do you go from 80,000 a month in sales to, you know, dollars 500,000 a month of sales?

So we are also contracted as co packers for real prep companies. That is going to push a lot of revenue by the end of the year. We're moving into an even bigger kitchen in about a month.

What does that mean, co packer, your licensed co packer?

They'll sell like meal plans. And what we do is we cook the food, pack it, store it, until shipment to go out. So, anybody that has like a meal prep, if you ever you ever seen those, the boxes that come to people's front doors, like that type of stuff.

Is that a higher margin business than cooking stuff yourself?

It is. Oh, yeah.

And then another thing is we applied for ACL. So fingers crossed, we get into that. It's a huge, the biggest music festival in Austin, and then we're looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars that we can reinvest in marketing.

How competitive are those spots at ACL?

They're very competitive. I have connections, and we're hoping this win at Burger Bash will help propel us. So I ran the Mighty Comb for four years.

The Mighty what?

The Mighty Comb.

Mighty Comb, okay.

And they were the first food vendor for ACL ever.

And

they've been there for twenty two or twenty three years now. And so I made a lot of connections at ACL working so closely with them being that staple vendor.

So you feel like if you get that contract, that's a multi 100,000 contract.

Correct.

What about just consistently doing more every month? Sounds like you need more people. Do you need a bigger space?

Correct.

The co packing thing, it's you just

need more people to be

able to direct towards that while we're growing the catering side, especially the corporate catering because you kind of, like, separate teams, so to speak. Okay. And then we still have easy cater, which is... You know, that's just consistently growing.

We need to bring on more people so that I can take a step back from the day to day operations because anytime I have a day to sit down at my computer and make phone calls and send emails, we're making sales.

But will you? You like, it sounds like being in the details in the kitchen.

I I will. I'd... I have been doing it a lot more lately.

That's where I come in. Okay. That's where I come in because quite honestly, she does when she sits down and starts making things happen behind the computer. We just get more that flows in.

Right now we're we're pushing our social media. We know that our website is positioned well. We know that not only is it coming up in Google search, it's also coming up in AI searches. For what?

What if I put Halal catering in Austin, Texas and Chatuchu BT, you'll pop up?

That's what we're told. Yeah. You know, we track every inquiry we come in of where the source was and it seems like over 50% have been AI recently has suggested us. So we know we're there. We know our website has the data blocks built in for those AI searches. And now really the only missing piece that we feel like for our marketing side is that social media aspect. You know, we do our best, but, you know, I'm a lot. I'm not that person.

And I feel like there's something you're not telling me because very rarely do I talk to a small business owner that knows the term data blocks, which is a very nerdy data schema term and programmatic SEO world. So you're not just a chef. I mean, how do you know SEO?

I'll put this, like, super short. I graduated high school at 16, graduated college at at 18, have been in this industry. I decided not to do what I graduated for, and stayed in this industry. And I am the person that wants to know how everything is done. I was taking apart VCRs and weeble wobbles as a kid to see how it worked.

Okay, this is why you know some of these terms. You sort of nerd it out on programmatic SEO so you know you need a Datablock schema to show up in the LLM so this makes sense. Is it just you? Is there anyone else doing your website optimization? No. Okay. So how many people are full time today?

Four, including us.

If you'd had extra capital to make a couple of hires, so content creation, what else would you hire for?

We need a few part time prep people that would move into full time. I think right now what we're lacking is the space. We need to move into a larger space. We need another catering van. We need larger equipment. Those sorts of things.

How many square feet is that spot currently? And what do you guys need?

A 2,500 square foot.

Okay. And now how much once you fully utilize a 2,500 square foot space, what do you think total monthly revenue could be out of a space like that?

Probably close to a 250,000.

250,000 per month. Yeah. Shot over 30 episodes. I can't think of another company that is a small business with higher revenue per employee. This is super impressive. It either means you charge a lot for your croissant burgers or you're just working your ass off doing a lot, a lot of business. Yeah. Do any of these expansion plans require capital? Yes. Okay. Tell me, tell me about that.

We right now moving into our kitchen, getting the equipment that we need and our new hires, I think we're at a minimum of 50,000. Moving to our kitchen, which actually isn't a huge expense because we've already paid to move into this one, they take what we paid there and apply it. So that's only about a $3,000 expense. The rest would be equipment. We need a double convection oven. Right now, we're running out of that little oven

that doesn't even... It's not even temped properly, and we're making it work. We need a 10 burner as opposed to a six burner stove. We need another flat top. We need a charbroiler. All the the little things you already have, they have to double in order for Yeah. Production to

you have other equity partners in the business today or is it just you guys?

We have one equity partner.

Okay. How much did you raise at the start to get going?

$30,000

Any other debt on the balance sheet?

We have around $15,000 in credit card debt.

Are you open to selling a chunk of the business, or do you prefer to take on debt that you pay back over time but keep all your equity?

We've both worked really, really hard for what we're doing here, and giving up a portion of it is scary. I think really what we would prefer is debt. Okay.

If I asked you to open your balance sheet and add up all of the inventory you're holding, right, because you... You've bought equipment. There's real assets there. What would that value be of all your equipment?

About 75,000.

Yeah. It's easy for me to do a deal if I can get three x coverage on the money I'm putting in relative to the the collateral you have. Right? So if you had a $150,000 worth of ovens Mhmm. It's easy for me to lend 50 k against that.

Right.

You don't have as much coverage as I would be looking for. Are there any other assets on the balance sheet besides equipment? Or it's really just the $75,000?

Yeah. I would say that it's about 75,000. Yeah.

If there's not as much coverage, it just means it's a little bit riskier for me. So I'll just charge a slightly higher rate. Right? That's sort of a trade off.

Right.

If we did the $50,000 investment, how long would it take you to invest that to start driving revenue growth? Is it instant or does it take a six month ramp period or twelve months?

It's instant. Yeah, that kitchen's available to us tomorrow if we wanted to move it.

So cash is the only thing between you and signing the new spot? Yes, If you had the 50 ks tomorrow, what do you think you would grow revenue to in two or three months?

I think that we could at least increase our revenue to $125,000 a month.

Well, if you've got confidence you can grow the business from $80 a month to $120 a month with an investment for me or someone else of $50,000 I'll structure an offer like this. I'll offer $50,000 and you guys pay back 1.3 x, the 50, if you pay me back in the first twelve months. If for some reason the ramp up is slower, takes you more time to grow, Let's say you need more time to pay back. It would just I would increase the multiplier if you pay back before month 20 four, something like 1.5 or 1.6 X.

Okay. And I think a structure is like that works well for us that we would know what to expect and we can work it into our budget.

Can you grow fast enough with my investment to pay me that on time?

I think the first couple of months would be the toughest until that second co packer and then hopefully a third after that. And then we're not really thinking twice about it.

I'd be more comfortable if we were somewhere around the $3,000 a month just for the first three to six months because there is so much reinvestment that will be happening, you know, that that $50,000 gets put into the business immediately, and then the the profit that we're making gets reinvested as we continue to grow. I think if there was a grace period of three to six months that we could be completely comfortable with that.

Okay. I'd have to get paid for that though, right? Because that means my money is out longer. It's at risk longer. Would take it and maybe take it from a 1.4 X, maybe like a 1.5 X or something like that. It's probably gonna be 5,500 a month, $62.50 a month. But you'd be responsible for nothing for the first, you know, three months. Yeah.

ACL is in October. Right? And, like, we know that's a wishful thinking in our back pocket. However, it's a huge upfront expense for the vendor to participate in ACL. You're, you know, you're feeding 30,000 people in three days, and then you're doing it for two weeks, and then you don't get paid out for six. So

I think that if we could push payback to, you know, we have a six month grace period on that, that I would be a 100% comfortable with $62.50 a month.

So your counter is $50,000 paid back at a 1.5 X repayment rate, six month payment holiday for the first six months, and then a twelve month period where you're making those monthly payments of 6,200.

Yeah.

I thought you guys said yes to everything. Now we're negotiating. I want to push you guys and make sure that that is, that does actually feel right. Does three months ramp up time? Is it six months ramp up time? Because you don't want to be in a situation where you're, you know, you're tight. And that first month payments turn on.

Right. I think the six month is where I would be comfortable. The

alternative is we structure this as a percent of monthly sales. It doesn't matter if you do a lot or a little in a month.

Right. What would you ask for at that point?

Well, would all come down to what your margin profile is. So if you told me today you're taking to the bottom line 15%, well then I would just say, great, I'll take something inside of that. Right? So 10% of monthly sales would come back to me to service the payment.

Right.

Okay. That way, you have a little month, you're not worried about a fixed $6,200 per month payment. Yeah.

If we get ACL, you're paid off immediately.

Yep. Exactly.

I don't hate that idea. I think if we did eight to 10% of monthly sales, I would be completely comfortable Okay. With that. I think the monthly percent of sales is a safer bet for us and honestly could benefit him quicker.

That would be the thing that I would be most comfortable with and easiest to get Nathan's money back. And because we're moving to

a percent of monthly sales, you will not ask for a payment holiday then?

Correct.

No. I'll do that deal. We have a deal?

We have a deal.

Alright. Let's get to work. That's good stuff. That's good stuff. It's hard negotiating with two people. Usually, I

just give

you one on one. Yeah. This is good.

YouTube, there are some good back and forth there. Let me know in the comments below what you

think of the deal.

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