I've investigated other failed restaurants. What some lenders do is to freely advance money with no collateral but take direct control of all future credit card receipts. They pretty much have you by the balls at that point. Doom loop.
Of course, Wally's was just the Dairy Queen back in my early Fine Trojan days. We had a friend that worked there who convinced us to never order one of those frosty's! Made of pretty nasty stuff.
I have a hunch that you are on to something there. Crazy that Buda EDC did that when there is already a pretty vibrant food and drink culture on Main Street.
I get the whole idea of perfecting your craft and all that stuff.
The truth is that there is likely way more money to be made from full bars than smoked brisket.
I have some pretty close ties to a restaurant that for years only did 5-10 pm service 7 days a week. Then their demographics changed and they decided to add lunch service M-F and do full service 11-10 on Saturday and Sunday. It really changed their operations a bunch. Additional managers and employees. Not always easy to find people that can wave the flag as well the originals.
Craft BBQ, full hours, and a full bar operation seems to be a difficult puzzle to solve. Valentina's has a great physical layout. Perhaps they need to add other foods to round things out?
Postal Inspectors and (remarkably) Secret Service are very responsive to matters involving bank fraud. Way more interested than local District Attorneys.
I drank free bourbon there one afternoon because they were short-staffed and didn't have anyone capable of operating the POS system. Not that I am complaining about that afternoon!
Stay away from the US postal service for any payments by check. I handle business affairs for my church and we ended up moving our mail delivery from our physical address to a P.O. Box due to all of the mail theft and check-washing that we experienced.