Getting a great restaurant for lease in a major market means access to the best restaurants for sale and restaurants for lease first.   

If there’s one lesson every restaurant owner discovers in the course of his career, it’s this one.  The landlord with a restaurant for lease is not your friend.  He’s not even your casual acquaintance.  He is, in fact, the opposite, someone that most directly works against your interest to secure his own.    It’s a business transaction to him.      

The landlord has specific requirements before he will consider the transfer, assignment or issue of a new lease on an Atlanta restaurant.  Careful preparation of this package up front eliminates surprises and moves you quickly into negotiations on the space.  That means you are first to get the space.  It’s also important to remember that the best Atlanta restaurant brokers get advance notice of Atlanta restaurants for lease and can make them available to you even before the previous tenant vacates.

Those landlord relationships are critical since your Atlanta restaurant broker is your first touch point with the landlord.  The landlord will generally not meet with a prospective tenant and enter into negotiations until he has performed initial credit checks and received a full information package.  Atlanta restaurants for lease are in highly desirable commercial districts and landlords are quite sophisticated in performing credit checks and due diligence. 

A piecemeal submission or something lacking from the package signals a lack of experience on either the restaurant broker or the buyer for an Atlanta restaurant for lease.  The larger the landlord is the more demanding are his requirements.  An expert Atlanta restaurant broker should be providing a full package of the landlord’s requirements within hours of a contract.  Small landlords may be less demanding and require only a personal financial statement and a menu. 

Here’s a full list of what is commonly requested in order of importance.  First is your personal financial statement which should have current and verifiable information.  A consent to credit check and the landlord’s credit application are next.  This is followed by two years of tax returns.  This is not negotiable for most large landlords though small ones can be less demanding.  They want to see sufficient income and liquidity between the tax returns and financial statement to give them assets to attach if you don’t pay the rent. Next is the menu, background and experience on you and a business plan.

Once the package is in hand, the landlord will begin lease negotiations.  Generally speaking, the stronger this package, the more leverage you have in the deal.  If you’re competing against less experienced restaurant brokers that don’t prepare their clients, you’ll win.  In the event that your financial picture is weak, don’t worry.  Landlords are securing against risk.  There are multiple ways to overcome either a credit deficiency or lack of liquidity.  An expert Atlanta restaurant broker can provide you with several strategies for this.