Two Businesses Under $1.2M Beat One At $5M.

THE BUYER'S BRIEF | DEAL BREAKDOWN

Two of the businesses this week have been operating for about forty years. So has the third. Two of them clear every bar in the model with room left over, and the one that does not is the biggest, the most established, and the one with fourteen trucks in the yard.

🟩 CLEARS AT 3.27x DSCR

Specialty Food Market | New York

The Setup. A neighborhood food market in New York that has fed the Polish, Ukrainian, and Eastern European community around it for roughly forty years. Grocery, deli counter, bakery, prepared foods, fresh meats, imported goods a chain store will not carry. Forty-six thousand transactions a year, a lease running to 2041 at below-market rent, and almost no direct competition nearby. One line in the listing is worth pausing on: payroll is given as an estimate, and in a store built on a deli counter, payroll is most of the business.

$381,989 a year in your pocket on a $110,000 down payment. See the full model

🟩 CLEARS AT 3.56x DSCR

Rehabilitation And Chiropractic Practice | Pennsylvania

The Setup. A multi-location rehabilitation and chiropractic practice in Pennsylvania, twenty-eight years in, running on referral networks rather than advertising. Eight people on staff including a chiropractor, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, and an M.D. The revenue is not just adjustments either. Immigration medical exams and driver’s license physicals sit alongside the rehab work, and those two are steady, contract-driven, and completely unglamorous, which is usually exactly where the money is. The owner is a licensed chiropractor and he is still in the buildings thirty-five hours a week.

$352,399 a year in your pocket, and the owner is the licensed one working 35 hours a week. See what that costs to replace

Scale is not the same thing as a good price. It never has been.

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🟥 FAILS STRESS TEST AT 1.31x DSCR

Plumbing, Heating And HVAC | New Jersey

The Setup. A full-service plumbing, heating, and HVAC company in northern New Jersey, forty years in business, running about fourteen service trucks with a full-time crew behind them. It serves residential customers, commercial accounts, and institutional and municipal contracts, which is a mix most shops this size never manage to assemble. Revenue climbed thirty-nine percent between 2023 and 2025. The broker prices it at five times stated earnings and points to the scale, the fleet, and the four decades as the reason. Whether a lender sees it the same way is a different conversation.

$236,315 a year in your pocket, and $1.44M of that price sits above what these businesses trade for. See what the extra costs you

A food market and a chiropractic practice both cleared this week, and neither of them would make anybody look twice at a conference. The company with forty years, fourteen trucks, and municipal contracts is the one wearing the red badge. Bigger is not safer and older is not cheaper, and the red badge is the one to open first.

 See you Thursday.

Mike

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