Valuing/selling a single stand-alone restaurant - thoughts?

Been engaged to sell a single, stand-alone high-end restaurant in a major city with ~10mm of revenue. I've started to do some googling and most reports are focused on franchises, chains, quickserve/fast casual and large restaurant group deals.

Does anyone here have experience with small restaurant deals like this? Do they transact off of revenue? EBITDA? Any key metrics I should be aware of? (ticket times? rev/table? rev/seat?)

Am also not working with the most robust financial information so this looks like it'll be a challenge to even put together something like a DCF.

Appreciate any insight anyone may have, thanks.

5 Comments
 
"jec"

If you have EBITDA, a balance sheet and some operating metrics to use for projections, I don't see why you can't use a simple dcf to justify a ballpark valuation. Ultimately it will boil down to the ROI the buyer can make on his investment, which is what the dcf should approximate.

You sure you work at a HF? Is it public, I want to short it?
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Best Response

If you are selling to an owner/operator buyer it will most likely driven by owners earnings. Normalization adjustments will be a key item depending on the sophistication of the seller. (Owner's Comp, Rent, Personal Expenses, etc.)

If it is a restaurant group they most likely value it off EBITDA or Revenue metrics.

Once single store restaurants hit a certain level of sales they can't really grow unless they expand. They are limited to the # of tables or whatever. So if it is a mature restaurant I would just capitalize the cash flows with a low long term growth rate. Probably grab some precedent transactions as well to triangulate, there are databases for small businesses. Use the values to come up with a reasonable range.

I don't work in the restaurant business...

 

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