It's 11pm on a Tuesday in January and Pim Saetang has been through the manila folder twice already. Contractor quotes, last summer's sales reports, the NOAA projections her insurance agent forwarded in December. She spreads them across the kitchen table, some overlapping, one sliding toward the edge. There's a photo of her grandmother tucked in the folder's inside pocket—the woman her restaurant is named for, standing in front of her house in Isaan.
"My husband goes to bed at 10," Pim says, pulling her laptop closer. "That's when I can actually think."
She owns Isaan Station, a 40-seat Thai restaurant in Milwaukee's Bay View neighborhood. The air conditioning died slowly last summer—not all at once, just a gradual wheeze into uselessness. Now she's got until Friday to decide if she's spending $18,000 she doesn't have to replace it.
The quotes all hover around that number. The cheapest contractor can't start until May, which means gambling on a cool spring. The middle quote—$17,800—can do March, before the season hits. That's the one she keeps coming back to, the one with "March 15" circled in blue pen.
"I keep thinking there's some number I'm missing," she says, opening her spreadsheet. "Like if I just look at it one more time."
The math doesn't change. Her restaurant brings in about $45,000 a month. Costs run $43,000. Last July, when the dining room hit 83 degrees and the kitchen climbed to 96, lunch revenue dropped 23%. Her line cook quit via text message. The one she has now has already asked what she's planning for next summer.
"He's good," she says, not looking up from the screen. "I can't lose him."
She pulls up the weather data again—the NOAA projections showing Milwaukee averaging more 90-degree days, longer heat events. She's been reading stories about restaurants in St. Louis taking cancellations during heat advisories, places closing for lunch because it's not worth staying open. Last summer she kept thinking the heat wave would break.
It didn't. Neither did her lunch crowd.
The Application
The next Tuesday, there's a bottle of Mekhong on the counter and the folder is thicker. She's printed out equipment financing options, 60-month payment plans at 8-10% interest. That's around $380 a month for five years.
"I can handle $400," she says. "It's less than insurance."
Her prime costs—labor plus food—run 69% of revenue. The recommended range is 60-65%. She's already trimmed everything she can without the food getting worse or the service falling apart. Her husband thinks she should finance it, keep their savings for real emergencies. Her accountant thinks she should wait.
"Just finance it," her husband said last week. "That's what it's for."
"And if the walk-in breaks?"
"Then we deal with that then."
But she's the one who deals with it. She's the one who opened Isaan Station three years ago, named it for the region where her grandmother farmed rice and raised chickens, where the heat was something you lived with, not something that shut down your business.
She opens the financing application on her laptop. Fills out the first page: business name, address, years in operation. Gets to the section asking for monthly revenue and personal credit score. Her cursor hovers.
"If I do this, we have no cushion. If something happens with family back in Thailand, if we have a slow winter—" She stops. "But if I don't do this, I might not have a restaurant."
The lease says she's responsible for HVAC replacement. She asked her landlord anyway, suggested splitting the cost. He was polite but firm: the lease is clear.
She's been staring at the contractor's number on her phone for twenty minutes. He needs to know by Friday if she wants the March slot. She still hasn't called.
Thursday Morning
Two days after the deadline, the folder is open again. The contractor quote is on top now, and she's written something in the margin: "Confirmed—March 15."
"I called him Thursday morning," she says. "Told him March. Then I submitted the financing application."
She's running scenarios on her laptop, the kind of math you do at 2am when you're trying to convince yourself. If she increases lunch prices by 50 cents per dish, that's maybe $200 more a month. If she adds weekend brunch service, that's another $400. If she does both, she can cover the $380 monthly payment and maybe build back some savings.
"These are all ifs," she says. "But doing nothing was also an if. If the weather isn't as bad. If my cook stays. If customers don't mind sitting in 85 degrees." She looks at the weather projections again. "Those felt like bigger ifs."
Her server told her last week: I'll stay if you fix it. Her cook said the same thing in December. She's in year three of running Isaan Station, and on good months she clears maybe 4% profit. On bad months, she dips into savings her husband keeps telling her they don't have anymore.
The financing came through Monday. Five years at $380 a month. The contractor starts March 15. She's already planning the brunch menu—khao tom, jok, pa thong ko. Her grandmother's breakfast dishes, the ones she grew up eating in Isaan before the heat got this bad, before you had to spend $18,000 to keep your kitchen cool enough to work in.
"I still don't know if this is the right decision. But I know what happens if I don't decide."
She puts the documents back in the folder. The sales reports from last July. The weather projections. The contractor quote with "March 15" circled. Her grandmother's photo.
"$18,000," she says. "Nine months of profit if every month is good. Or the cost of staying open."
Outside, it's 14 degrees and snowing. In eight weeks, the contractor will install the new system. In five months, she'll find out if the math works. Right now, at midnight on a Tuesday in January, the decision is made.
She picks up the folder, tucks it under her arm. "Come back in July," she says. "I'll show you if it was worth it."
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Kitchen worker walkouts: McDonald's employees in Los Angeles staged walkouts during October heatwaves to protest extreme kitchen conditions that made work unbearable without adequate cooling.
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The federal heat standard: OSHA proposed new rules in July 2024 that would require employers to provide drinking water and rest breaks once temperatures reach certain thresholds, potentially affecting how restaurants manage kitchen conditions.
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Lost workforce hours: Research published in Climactic Change estimates that up to 1.8 billion workforce hours could be lost annually over the next three decades due to extreme heat caused by climate change.
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Equipment financing speed: Many equipment lenders can process applications and approve loans within a few days, making it possible for restaurant owners to respond quickly to broken equipment or time-sensitive opportunities.