June 8, 2026
‘I Lost Friends Because I Can’t Pay People Back’: Nagela Duperval Shares Mistakes She Made When Opening A Restaurant
OU LA Restaurant owner Nagela Duperval gets vulnerable about the challenges of financing a small business
Nagela Duperval has long been entrepreneurial, but opening a restaurant was never part of her master plan.
“I was a struggling single parent, just taking care of everybody. So I got into real estate. I became a real estate investor,” she said. “The restaurant really came about because I was looking for another way to bring in money, because there was never enough money.”
Despite having no experience in the industry, Duperval decided to open a restaurant as her next venture after receiving a tip that was too good to pass up.
“A friend introduced me to a space that was available in Carteret, New Jersey, and it came with a liquor license. And I’m like, ‘Yes, liquor license! I’m about to make money,” Duperval said. “But I didn’t think about anything else. I just jumped in.”
What she thought was a golden opportunity—especially after the landlord threw in a year of free rent—turned into a nightmare when she wasn’t able to secure an SBA loan. It ended up taking three years to open OU LA Restaurant & Bar. And in that time, Duperval borrowed from whoever she could to get the business off the ground.
“I went into a business thinking, ‘Oh, we going to make money,’ right? So I promised people these high returns, these crazy returns, because I was just so desperate,” she admits. “I lost relationships because I can’t pay people back. I lost friends because I can’t pay people back.”
Four years into the venture, and a year into being open, OU LA is finally in a good place—and Duperval is working hard to repay her debts. She spoke candidly at the recent How I Got Here (HIGH) small-business summit and shared the lessons she’s learned so that other entrepreneurs don’t make the same mistakes.
Don’t Count Your Loans Before They Hatch
“I thought the opportunity was so easy; they’re giving money to small businesses. But it’s actually harder for us to get funding. They don’t tell you you need collateral. I had gone ahead and sold all my investment properties thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to have the money on hand.’ But then where’s the collateral? How are you going to secure this loan?
“They don’t tell you that if you have investors giving you money, they need to see their bank account. I didn’t think about any of these things, because I went into this so blind.
“I also made the mistake of starting construction before I even got approved for the loan. So now I’ve started construction, and I’m not getting this SBA loan. So I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do?’ I have to keep borrowing from different people to try to figure it out, because at this point, I was so caught up in completing the project, I didn’t care who I was borrowing from. I was just taking, taking, taking … wherever I could get it.”
Remember That Even After Opening A Restaurant, Capital Is Still Needed
“When I opened, another big mistake was not having working capital. You cannot open a business without working capital. The week that I didn’t make enough money to cover payroll, how was I going to pay my staff? OU LA was making about $15,000 to $18,000 a week. Payroll alone was about $25,000.
“So I’m working a full-time job to pay people at my business. I’m working a full-time job to pay vendors. Vendors were calling me. They were like, we’re not delivering to you anymore because you’re on COD [cash on delivery].
It got to the point where I didn’t have anyone else to borrow from. I couldn’t go into my 401(k). I couldn’t take any more loans because my credit was shot. I stopped paying my personal bills because, again, I was using my paycheck to pay people for the business. I was ready to say, ‘You know what? I’m going to close my doors. I can’t do this. I failed.’ It was the most difficult time.”
Be careful who you trust
“Any business is tough if you don’t have the right support system. I went into the restaurant business, and it’s something that I just did not have any idea about. I was relying on experts to help me. And then I find out these people really aren’t experts themselves. They don’t really know.
“I finally met somebody that started helping, started teaching me, ‘This is what you have to do. This is how you figure out your food costs. This is how you pay the vendors.’
“But before that I had people that I was trying to partner with trying to take advantage. Three different investors that I was trying to partner with all turned out to be frauds. They wanted to take my business from me. It was terrible.”
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