Selling a Restaurant - a Three Part Recipe by the Restaurant Brokers

What’s the recipe for selling a restaurant?  Like any good dish, you have to begin with the right ingredients says the restaurant brokers.  When you’re selling a restaurant those ingredients might be:  a good business with a stable cash flow, consistent sales or good standing in the community among peers and customers.  Those may not be the only ingredients however.  Sometimes those selling a restaurant add in things like long term liabilities to be satisfied out of the sale (like back taxes) or disputes with the landlord or franchisor.  When these items are thrown in the mix, it takes a restaurant broker to keep the entire recipe from falling apart before it ever gets baked into a deal.

Once the ingredients are assembled, the next step in any recipe for selling your restaurant is mixing it up into a listing that sells.  Writing the copy for selling a restaurant means striking a balance.  You can’t reveal so much that the location is “guessed” by the buyers or tell so little that you can’t get a restaurant buyer interested.   That’s why good restaurant brokers write copy that gets attention and reels in a buyer.  You might see a listing written like this one saying, “this franchise bar for sale in Georgia is a rare commodity.  Six figure earnings are demonstrated ON THE BOOKS.  Perfect P&L's for review for every month.  Sales last year exceeded $1.2 Million dollars which earns an owner/operator $116,000.00.”  What does the restaurant buyer learn?  One, it’s a franchise restaurant for sale.  Secondly, the earnings can be documented by the restaurant broker.   Lastly, the dollar amount of sales and profits are communicated to attract the buyer and entice them to learn more.  What they don’t discover is which franchise is offered or the name of the business.  That is the critical part of the recipe that mixes what information is available for the public versus the data that must be hidden until a buyer is qualified.   

The last part of the recipe is controlling the temperature and getting a deal baked.  Depending on how a restaurant broker markets your restaurant, it can read like a fire sale or an offering that’s set in rock hard ice.  The temperature analogy extends to pricing.  You don’t want your restaurant broker to price your restaurant for sale too high or too low.  If it’s too hot a deal, then the word may leak out despite the best of intentions.  If it’s priced to high, the deal may turn cold movement may be too slow for an anxious restaurant seller. 

The restaurant broker in the deal also keeps the temperature regulated between the buyer and seller.  He or she serves as a buffer for the times when negotiations heat up.  Since the restaurant broker is a neutral party, he or she keeps both parties from flying off the handle and works to get the deal cooked.

At the end of the day, the recipe for selling your restaurant can seem sometimes a little bitter for the seller or not sweet enough for the buyer.    The restaurant broker is the person who brings just the right amount of spice to the deal to ultimately get it to the closing table. 

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