The new Travelers restaurant at 2524 Beacon Ave. S. has been open for a month or so now, serving Indian food and also selling Indian cooking supplies from a tiny store in the restaurant. However, opening the new restaurant along with their existing Capitol Hill location has apparently put the business into a financial crunch. Here’s a message posted today on their Facebook page:

Dear Fellow Travelers,

We’ve always been open with our customers, our community, when we’ve needed your help, and you have always come through for us. Thank you for your continuing support that has allowed us to survive 13 years, including some very hard times. Travelers is again at a difficult point, our survival depends upon your support.

We have been really excited about our new restaurant, and we were slammed with customers when we opened the doors. We hired more people, “real servers,” more kitchen support, a Nepali farm woman (seriously!). All great folks. But business has dropped off, and the bills kept coming. Payday is coming, and we need your help.

Here’s what we are doing to make us easy to support

Payroll Party! Thursday night September 22nd, come help us harvest enough bounty to compensate our wonderful staff and get us through our big crunch. To make it a real party we are offering a couple of super deals

Get an extra 20% with any $100 gift certificate
Take 20% off any sale totaling $100 or more

You can add up lots of little stuff and still get the 20% discount. With the certificates, the extra 20% can be a separate $20 certificate if you prefer. We’ll be open at both locations with tasty food and beverages. We have wine and beer too at the Beacon location (try a Taj from India, or a Kingfisher), delicious with pakoras.

Though we don’t like reviewing restaurants until they’ve been open for a few months, we’ve been to Travelers several times already and found the food to be tasty and inexpensive. We like it, and hope they will stay around.

See also this story at the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog.