So not saying this to invalidate your need, but I would recommend talking to your new managers about employee shoes. A lot of restaurants can buy stuff from Shoes for Crews directly and they could just give you the shoes and take it off your next check. Most places are also cool about not having a good food handlers permit for whatever county/municipality you're in for the first 30 days of you being smoking. Edit: meant to say hired, I was half asleep typing this
Like I said, not invalidating your needs, even if everything I said applies to your restaurant, it's still reasonable to want help paying for that. Just figured I'd chime in to hopefully give you some time to get the help