Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - The $1.3M Drive-In That Could Make You the Most Popular Person in Town

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

In this episode the hosts evaluate a 75-year-old drive-in restaurant in rural North Carolina generating $370K in cash flow, debating whether the steady profits and real estate make it a great lifestyle business—or a job you can never truly escape.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/own-the-legendary-city-drive-in-the-front-porch-of-spruce-pine-nc/2489437/Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.Looking to build a professional website in minutes? Try Wix: https://wix.pxf.io/c/6898629/3115214/25616?trafcat=templateHubSpot is the backbone for how businesses scale without chaos. Try them out here: https://go.try-hubspot.com/OeG9VrSubscribe for more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquisitionsAnonymousPodcast?sub_confirmation=1Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.acquanon.com/newsletter💰 Sponsored by:CapitalPad is a private equity co-investment group for lower middle market deals. Accredited investors invest in searcher and independent sponsor transactions on a deal-by-deal basis, with minimums starting at $25K. Acquisition entrepreneurs with a deal under LOI can raise equity through CapitalPad's single-SPV structure, closing with one partner and one wire. Raise capital or invest at https://capitalpad.comQuiet Light Brokerage specializes in helping entrepreneurs buy and sell businesses with experienced operators as brokers. They offer a free valuation clarity call to help owners understand what their business is worth and how to increase its value before selling. Learn more at https://quietlight.com/Key Highlights:- $1.3M asking price including real estate valued near $900K- $370K cash flow with potential SBA financing requiring as little as 5% down- 75-year-old local institution with strong community reputation and events revenue- Limited growth upside—business likely to remain stable but not scale dramatically- Biggest risk: dependency on the local town’s population and seasonal demandSubscribe to  weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking hereDo you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show!Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations.For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. This is the internet's number one podcast on buying, selling, and operating small businesses. I am one of your hosts, Bill D'Alessandro, and today I am with four of my friends, Heather Anderson, Mills, Snell, Michael Gurley, and Travis Jameson from CapitalPad. And we have a really fun deal is a drive-in restaurant in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. This is straight out of diners, drive-ins, and dives. It has been open for 75 years. It has $370,000 of cash flow. It's a local institution in the North Carolina Mountains.

We have a fun time talking about it. There are some really interesting real estate dynamics where you can get a very attractive SPA financing package for this business. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We'll say, Acquisitions Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line.

Hey, everyone, it's Bill. And I want to tell you about maybe the most exciting sponsor we've had in a long time on the pod. It's called CapitalPad. And it is the thing that I wish existed when I started my journey of operating and investing in small businesses. So CapitalPad is a marketplace for acquisition entrepreneurs that is people who want to buy a business and need capital. to list their deals and solicit capital from other people who want to invest in acquisition deals. So if you want to back somebody buying a small business, CapitalPad is a place to do it. And if you want to buy a business and need capital, you can go on CapitalPad to be introduced to investors.

So the really great thing, too, from the investor side is that CapitalPad takes care of all of the details that can get hairy with small business acquisitions. They handle standardized terms, standardized governance, standardized distributions all up front in black and white. Basically, CapitalPad professionalizes investing in small businesses. And the returns can be really, really good. I'm so stoked that they exist. It's founded by my friend Travis, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in his own right. So if this sounds like something that is appealing to you, if you want to buy a small business and need capital, or if you want to invest in small businesses, go check out Capitalpad.

and tell them that Acquisitions Anonymous sent you. All right. We have a full house today, five hosts on Acquisitions Anonymous, five per the price of zero because you're paying nothing to listen to this podcast. So Heather and Mills and Michael and Travis from CapitalPad and myself Bill Dallisandra,

how are you guys doing? Fantastic. Good to be here. We're going to try to hammer out two episodes, two deals in one recording sessions. So these will probably be back to back. So I want to get right into the first one, which I am fired up about,

and I found on Biz Buy Sale, and I think is in Travis's backyard. So this is, it says, own the legendary city drive-in, the front porch of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. It is a legendary city drive-in front porch. Where is Spruce Pine, North Carolina, Travis? Is that near you?

I think, I'm not really sure. It's like everyone knows the names for his plan, but I don't think anyone knows where it's at. I think this is in Western North Carolina, like in the Appalachian Mountains. You guys want to know about it? It's a surprisingly cool business. Look how cool this place looks. This place is awesome. It is the legendary city drive-in.

They have $1.3 million of revenue and $3,000 of cash flow, SD. And they're asking $1.3 million for it. So that is three times, roughly. But they listed the real estate's worth 900,000. So it's basically like a turn and a half of SD. Yeah. Well, it says, and I'll get into this, but it says this offering is a comprehensive package,

including the prime real estate and over $230,000 of tangible assets. So maybe it includes the real estate, which would be very interesting. Let me tell you more. So it was established in 1950, so this business is 75 years old doing drive-thru movies. It says, own a piece of history while you make it your own. For the first time in decades, the legendary city drive-in is available for an acquisition. A cornerstone of the community for 75 years, this is a rare turnkey and highly profitable enterprise.

As I said, this offering is a comprehensive package, including the prime real estate and over $230,000 of tangible assets. Asset list is attached. We'll look at that at the end. Situated a high visibility corridor with a steady traffic count of about 5,000 vehicles daily. This property offers consistent exposure to both local residents and passing travelers. The sale includes the land and the multi-building facility, ensuring your investment is backed by significant real estate value. It says a multifaceted facility, and this is what makes it interesting. Number one, the original grill, the heart of the operation, housing the main kitchen, counter service, and high traffic takeout.

Also, 670 Oak Avenue, aka the expansive indoor dining venue featuring a full-service bar. All ABC, that's Alcohol Beverage Commission in North Carolina. All ABC permits are current and in place. The awning, preserving the classic Americana experience with traditional curbside dining, and then the entertainment hub, which is a dedicated area for live music, appetizers, and cocktails. It has proven revenue streams and established event venue, the primary destination for regional festivals, car and bike shows, and wedding receptions, full-scale catering, a robust service line for corporate meetings, community events, and weddings,

and weekly staples, which says high engagement programming, including karaoke and trivia nights. Total asset inclusion, sale includes all real estate and $230,000 of equipment and assets. It's a turnkey operation, move forward immediately with all equipment, ABC permits, and branding in place. You have a 75-year legacy and a multi-generational customer base. the inventory says there's $80,000 in inventory, which we got to believe is like food, not included in the asking price,

but the $234,000 of FF&E is included. It says they have 18 employees, five of them are part-time, or sorry, five of them full-time, 13 of them part-time. Facilities, the grill area houses a commercial kitchen, the refrigeration,

and the counter-service space. The drive-in curb area provides convenient curbside service for customers. There's also the indoor dining and full-service bar. area where guests can enjoy cocktails and beer while listening to live music. There's additional outdoor seating and picnic tables, relaxed and inviting atmosphere, three restrooms, blah, blah, blah.

The sale includes the real estate again. The property is a prime location. It's in the Tri-County area of Avery, Mitchell, and Yancey Counties, which offers an exceptional place to live, work, and vest. Spruce Pine continues to experience steady growth. It's become a sought-after destination for visitors and businesses alike. Just minutes from the Grassy Creek Golf Course. and the YMCA of Mitchell County.

They have lots of festivals around, lots of restaurants within 10-mile radius. They're open Monday through Saturday. They do breakfast on Saturdays, blah, blah, blah. You can do all kinds of other things, host different types of events. The current husband-wife ownership team is willing to remain on for a transition period.

I'll ensure a smooth handoff. The owners are wanting to retire, enjoy their grandchildren, and travel. And there is a map here of exactly where this is, and this is just north of Marion, North Carolina, about probably, I would say, 30 minutes northeast of Asheville. Okay, it's an hour from Asheville.

So this is like in the foothills, the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. So what do you guys think? I love this one. It's so cool. The pictures are amazing. It's like hanging off the side of the highway, like a carved into the side of a mountain, sort of.

And when you like, I think, rewind to some of the original purpose, of like these SBA loans for acquiring these companies. Like this seems like the real original like thesis behind it. Like this business that's been around forever that needs to transition. There's no other way to do it besides SBA loan. This seems like a nice fit for that. I love this.

Yeah, I would agree with you. It does seem like a nice fit for that. And it seems like it's priced really fair. I mean, if 900 of the million four-ish of asking price is real estate value, I did some quick math. if they're not paying rent, which I doubt they are in their P&Ls, the cost of a $900,000, 25-year real estate loan is about $85,000 a year. So I kind of locked that off of the cash flow that

they said the 270SDE. So I took off the 84 for the real estate loan and another $100,000 for like a salary, came up with about $200,000 of cash flow. And you're still only paying two turns of EBITDA for the business and then buying the real estate at market value. I mean, not very, very fair value. It seems like a really good deal, but you do have to want to live where this is and you have to want to run this kind of business. I mean, in fairness, where this is is not far from Asheville, North Carolina. You could live in a suburb of Asheville and be to work in 30 minutes. 2,500 people live here, looked it up in Spruce Pine. What is the appeal of Spruce Pine? I'm saying this is a Texan.

The type, and the reason I ask is, towns like this in Texas, we don't move to. So why do I want to move to this sort of North Carolina? North Carolina is full of towns like this, where people walk to them. It's probably very pretty. That's the difference, Michael. It's pretty.

No, we have pretty. There's just pretty much nothing out there. That's what we have in Texas. I mean, this is a, what a, gym of a listing for someone who is like interested in living in the middle of nowhere who wants to have this like small town life um and you know you hear all the time of like uh searchers like they're buying a job but just make sure it's a job you really like this is the perfect example of that if you wouldn't have a job where you're you know working the bar having to be like the center

of a community type of thing this seems like a great fit for that oh yeah and you're making you you know, after everything, $200, $250 a year, right? Or $200 a cash flow, which in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, it's pretty good. And you know, the pictures, this place is packed. Yeah, and you're also like the coolest guy in town because you own the local watering hole and the thing that everybody stops by and it's a tourist attraction. It seems like the only thing they're missing is like an arcade and a pool table, like in your set.

It is not very big. So that is maybe an advantage or not. The driving part is confusing. me. Does it just mean you get served in your car? It's like a sonic. It's not a drive-in theater here, right? It's like a thonic. It's not a drive-in movie theater. It's not a sonic. Okay. So it's like a sonic restaurant. You can see these blue kind of awnings.

So you drive it. So this is basically what this is like three or four different dining formats all together and also has like live music and like reasons to come hang out. This is like pre-food truck, food truck? Yeah. So, I mean, it's like your old school, you know, diners. drive-ins and dives, like, you know, that show, like, that's what this is about. Like, you pull your car up, like, you know, in old school, like, a girl would skate up on roller skates and take your order and, like, bring your food to your car and, like, hang the tray on the side of the driver's window. Like, you guys seen that, like, from the 50s? Um, that's what this is. Currently reminds me of a flea market, given those flea market vibes, but I can see it. I will say it is,

it is listed by a real estate broker. This Chris, a Cronet guy, I looked up his phone number. He has the URL listed withchris.com. That is a great real estate digital URL. Love it.

What this place is, is Lindy. It has been around. It's been here for 75 years. It's food and alcohol and live music. Like, not going anywhere. I think your biggest risk here

as if somehow this town dies. Yeah. The other big thing with these is this is super seasonal. So I can't remember, like, obviously, like when the leaves change, people flock to, you know, Western North Carolina. There are probably long dry spells in spruce pine. But there is probably still like a permanent population there, just like, you know, cashers and other parts of North Carolina that have become more of a

destination. But I would be worried about a little bit of seasonality here just in terms of the way you model the cash flow around the debt service. That's a good point, Mills. You've really got two, you could divide this in half. There's a real estate and there's an operating business. And that's what Heather kind of tried to do at the top, thinking about financing them differently. And to me, before you even think about financing them, I think you have to value them. You can't take good old Chris Cornett at his face value that this real estate is worth 900 grand, which he seems to think it is, right? At the end of the day, it's on the side of the road of the middle of nowhere.

Is this real estate really worth $900,000? So I would want to get, and by the way, real estate is only worth what you can sell it for or cash flow from it. So I would want to underwrite first how much of this $1.375 million is, in fact, hard real estate value or not. Now, let's say it is 900 grand. Then that leaves, to your point, Heather, about low under 500K in value for the business. The problem is the business isn't worth anything without the land. Yeah.

So, like, it would be pretty hard for you to get your capital out without closing the business and selling the land later. So I think you really need to kind of model some kind of, you need to have a plan for terminal value here, if you're going to buy this thing. Heather, can you refresh me how the real estate portion works when SBA loans? I know it allows you to pay it off over longer periods of time, but how is it valued? Or just give me whatever you want to do me.

They're going to want a commercial appraiser to come in and tell us what the value of the real estate is, and then a business valuation vendor to say what, you know, what the value of the business is. They'll put the two together. And in the SBA program, if the real estate is worth more than the real estate, If the real estate is worth more than the enterprise, which seems to be the case here, then the buyer could get one loan for 25 years and put both the enterprise and the real estate. So there's a big advantage to that from a cash flow perspective. But to Bill's point, the hard part is actually the two values,

because the real estate and the cash flow are kind of intertwined. This is probably the highest and best use of this property. There's not something else you could sell this real estate for, unless I'm wrong, and maybe there is, but if there's not something else you could sell this real estate to be used for, then the value of the real estate really is tied to the cash flow of the restaurant, you know, that's on it. So it gets tricky. Well, to be more specific, the value of the real estate is tied to the rent that the restaurant that's on it can pay. Yeah.

Right. If you were to sever it from the ownership of the restaurant. And I don't know if Spruce Pine, if you could demolish this thing and put up a whole bunch of condos and make everyone in Spruce Pine hate you. But I don't know if there's demand for condos on this thing or whatever. It doesn't seem like it really looking at the map. Yeah, probably not. It's more like a mountain bed and breakfast town. About to fall off of it.

Sorry, that 370 of cash flow, I'm going to guess when someone's owned a property like this this long, they're not charging rent in their P&Ls. So I think when you come along and apply an occupancy expense or a rent or whatever the loan amount is going to be, your SDE is going to shrink by about $84,000. Because that's what it costs you. I was going to say probably more, right? Because let's say, you know, let's say this business makes like if you had to pay rent, let's say it could make $250k a year after paying you $100 or $120,000 of rent. And I mean, what does this a property like this go for? You know, is it a eight cap, 10 cap? I don't know.

Let's say it's a 10 cap just because I want to do easy mental math. You know, if they pay 100 grand a year, maybe the property is worth a million bucks. So there is a quiet thing about what happens to cap rates in random places like this. They tend to be significantly higher than the big cities. So like, let's say you were in Charlotte, you know, I have a buddy who buys properties like this and he's like, yep, that's a 15 cap. Why? Because nobody else going to be buying something like that, not in the middle of nowhere.

And he had a building like that that if it was in his big city, he would have sold for a five cap. And he's like, yeah, I sold it for a 10 cap out of the middle of nowhere. So if you double it, you know, maybe if this is a 15 or 20 cap, now your real estate's worth 500 to 750, something like that. But do they throw in the margaritas for free? That's what you got to ask. So one thing that's interesting about this is they have a tremendous number of Google reviews. For something that is, you know, off the beaten path in a small town, they have 451 Google reviews and it's four and a half stars. For contrast, the spruce pint tap room has 11 reviews.

Like, I think this is a happening place. There is a place on the opposite side of town, which is, it looks like a half mile away called Heffs restaurant that has 655 reviews. But there is, it's a totally nondescript bar. Like, it just is a regular restaurant. This is at least like the nostalgia of the drive-in and the front porch because I think it's like on your way into town. I think there's something, there's some value to place on that, but it seems like the reviews back at all. How much of the success of a place like this is because the owners are basically the like ambassadors for the local town. I mean, you look at the pictures of the people there. It looks like the entire town as they're hanging out together with these folks. Like if I'm some random, let's say from Texas,

six foot five, no hair, just some random person and not that friendly, like, am I going to have the same amount of luck that these guys are going to have? I think you have to absolutely become the surrogate. There's a really cool like little restaurant right across the street from my office here in Five Points in Columbia. And it was this couple who started it like 40 years ago and they were just synonymous with the business. It wasn't their name. It's called the gourmet shop. And a young, very, like, you know, networked person in town bought the business. And now she's synonymous. But it took like multiple years of overlap to buy this little, it's like a place where you can get like chicken salad sandwiches and like they have like really

nice. They serve alcohol for lunch. But it's very similar. I think you have to assume the, persona, you know, and the business has to assimilate you and the town has to assimilate you. Definitely up by that role. I also think these are these are hard businesses to run. You're getting just like you have to wear all the hats, what you do in all of these small businesses, but I feel like in like the restaurant industry, it's even more. Like I was just on their Facebook page and they're posting tons of pictures all the time. Just thinking of that, of setting it up of like running to get cups of like it's always going to be. be just something, something, something. The dishwasher is broken and yeah. Yeah, I mean,

it's a restaurant, right? So it's open during the times that you want to be hanging out with your family. This is like the curse of all restaurants is that they're open nights and weekends, right? Which is a bummer. I would be diligent,ing kind of the secondary management layer in place. I mean, if you had, let's say you were like, you had two really, one or two really good GMs that have been there for a long time. I wonder if there's some way to kind of cut. them in, lock them in to, you know, give them single-digit equity ownership percentages and keep them around, kind of to ensure some continuity and so that you don't have to be there 24-7. I doubt this business is big enough to have two GMs, but I get what you're saying.

Like, I think that's the hard thing about it is that on a business this size, you may have somebody who's been there 20 or 30 years, you know, alongside the ownership, but there's a very thin layer. Like Travis said, you are, you're handling the management, you're handling scheduling, you're handling payroll, you're probably handling placing the food orders for the week. Like, you're the social media person posting on Facebook. You're thinking about like what are our specials during the, you know, dead season. Like, you're doing all those things, maybe short of being a hostess and a server. And you do that too sometimes. Yep. This episode of Acquisitions Anonymous is brought to you by Quiet Light Brokridge. And I'm sitting here.

to tell you, I have both sold businesses with Quietlight and bought businesses from Quietlight. And in my opinion, they are extremely high quality people, very, very rigorous, and they're really straight shooters. One of the things that differentiates Quiet Light is every single broker at Quiet Light has been an operator. They have been an operator of an active business and they have sold it. Many of them have also bought businesses. So they really understand what it means to be in the seller's seat and how important that is to you. And they also really, really, understand what it means to be in the buyer's seat. So they don't BS you, but they really do know how buyers think. All of the transactions I did with Quiet Light. In fact, one of them, they took over

a sale process that another broker had not been able to get done. And they got it done for me inside of 90 days. So I've had very positive personal experiences with Quiet Light. And I do recommend them wholeheartedly to a lot of people. And now they're sponsor of the podcast. So one thing you can get for free is if you head over to Quietlight.com, they will do evaluation clarity. call with you, which is not a sales call. They're not pushy people. They'll just kind of tell you, hey, here's what your business is probably worth. And here are a few things you could do to make it worth more. And hey, maybe don't sell it right now. Do these things. Come back to us in six months and you'll get a much better multiple. So if you're thinking about selling your business or you're

thinking about buying a business, especially in the e-commerce space where they're very, very strong. I've been doing this for over a decade. Go check out Quietlight brokerage over at quietlight.com. The big diligence item is what is my day-to-day going to be like? Because you are buying a job, you just better like the job. Yeah. Like they say they have five full-time employees and 13 part-time. I bet the part-time is 100% seasonal. Yeah, that's a good point.

I personally love it when I see things like this just shut down for like five months a year. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. If you can afford to do it, then it's the way to go. I mean, while these guys are losing money on the off-season anyway. I guess typically the hardest part about that is getting your staff. DAF back the next year because they go do other things. A lot of these towns, though, like thrive on that seasonality.

Like, I know folks who own, like, cabins and Airbnbs, you know, in places like this. And they'll have, like, a person who, you know, is maybe like a bartender at a place like this who also does their cleaning. You know, it's a remote business for the people I know. They don't live in those towns, but they need somebody who can, like, at the drop of a hat, go, you know, clean the, unit in between bookers. And so, you know, I think there is like the whole town kind of thrives on that in a way. So, I mean, ultimately, let's assume you want to, you kind of want this job. You want to make 200 plus running a restaurant in the Appalachian Mountains. You know, maybe this is a second career for you, maybe you want to quasi retire. How do you, it seems like I can get a

25-year SBA loan for the whole thing. Right, Heather? It means the amortization is functionally nothing. And what are the rates for a real estate loan? It's probably better than operating this, right? Yeah, they are better. They're usually about a point lower than for just an enterprise loan. The bank has a longer time to make money, and they will charge less than if there's collateral. So I'd say like eight and a half percent here, maybe eight.

That's, it's good financing. It's long-term financing. And I bet this deal pencils, which is my favorite. I love when that happens. It never happened. It's your favorite because it's so rare. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, did you guys see it?

It works. You just have to be willing to do a ton of work. Yeah. It seems like a great fit for someone who's already kind of in this role in the industry. Maybe they're a GM at some restaurant and they just kind of want to have their own to do it their way to like maybe build some equity value over the long term. They've saved enough to do something like this. It seems like a good fit because they already know what they're getting into. And to your point, Travis, you could.

you could probably, someone like that could do this with almost no money down. I mean, because you've got the great debt on it and you could get probably some seller financing. I don't know how that kind of interplays. You've got to be full standby, you know, whatever, but you could probably put very little into this. Yeah, you could put as little as 5% down on SBA if your seller would carry a note of another 5% that is on full standby. You know, you're not required to make any payments while your SBA. owns outstanding. So to your point, if you had the right resume, a bank would not do that, that type of aggressive structure if you didn't have the perfect resume. So if that restaurant person

came along, didn't have a lot of money, could get the seller to give them that standby note, they could get into this with very little debt. And it would still pencil. Back to, you know, because it's priced right, it would still pencil that way. So this is a nice deal from that perspective. So you could be into this for, I mean, let's say it doesn't go for the full one thing. 375, let's say you get them down to 1-1 or even 1 million, right? Something like that. You could be into this for 50 to 100 grand of equity. Yeah.

Right? And you would be making six figures year one, paying down your loan, and maybe you structure, and Heather, I don't know, the sensitivities around here. Can you structure a little upside for the seller, like another 100 grand or something over time? They won't let you do that. SBA won't let you put any upside or earn out or any. anything like that for the seller. Can you employ the seller?

Not unless they roll over equity, and that's a whole other mess of a structure. So the SBA does make the seller leave within 12 months if you buy them out fully. If you don't buy them out fully, then the seller has to personally guarantee your loan. And not many people are getting the seller to sign up for something like that. I don't know.

I mean, honestly, I don't think it's, I think that the SBA thought that sellers were doing roll over equity be out of kind of greed that they were going to make all this money, but that's not really why it was being done. So they thought they were going to make all this extra money. So if they're going to do that, they have to personally guarantee the loan. But I think the SBA misunderstood why some sellers are doing role over equity. It's usually a transition issue, not because they're going to make so much money on the roll over equity. See, every time I see a regulation, I think someone was doing fraud. and it makes them want to try to figure out like,

why does this exist? What sort of fraud is this block? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I wonder if it's like, you know, you have it, you're basically, you're trying to launder the PG to somebody else, right? That's what that people think. I honestly think we have a lot of rules where one time it happened

and then we, you know, overreacted and we created a rule as if it was happening dozens and dozens of times and it probably wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. One thing we haven't talked about on this one is, the incredibly limited ability to generate any more revenue than the business is generating right now. It's not like they don't have alcohol service and you're like, oh my gosh, all we have to do is, you know, or like they have this whole like back room that they just don't seat people in. I mean, they're probably already generating 90% of their revenue that's possible here.

maybe there's some like merch angle where you know we talked about that um live well or like what was the 7a business there was like a beach town in florida that uh 30a right was i think what it was um the beach brand yeah the beach brand and the people like they had like a rental business and they made this massive uh apparel business on the back of the beach chair rental like i don't think you can do that here, right? It's not, there's not an equivalent way to like unlock a huge revenue potential or double this business top line. I don't think so. I mean, one thing comes in mind, like, can you, they've got a fair bit of extra parking lot here. Like, could you put a gas station on it? You know, I looked at the parcel on the county maps. It's not that big.

Some people in my inbox would say AI synergies will fix things. Your LinkedIn inbox? All the inboxes. Yeah. I mean, this one, this, the pros and cons of this one is it's going to be around forever and it's probably going to be about this big forever yeah the only other fear i think someone touched on it briefly but was like some of these small towns maybe have a manufacturing plant that's closing down or something like that like that would be the only thing to really watch out for make sure this is like tourism based before it's not something else just local based yeah good point yeah to some degree you'd almost prefer if this was tourist, like your main clientele was tourism because that's kind of hard to die overnight.

Overnight. I hate tourism. So Asheville, where I live, it's, its main revenue source is tourism. And that's great. But when there's a economic swing, what's the first thing that's going to get hit? You're just going to stop going to this place. And maybe a little place like this, I don't know, the leafers coming to see the pretty trees, maybe that will survive, right? Instead of flying to Las Vegas and spend a bunch of money. So maybe that's fine. I don't know. On the plus side, you own your building and your real estate. I'd be curious to what the property taxes are. Hopefully, they're reasonable.

And maybe you just scale down and you ride it out because you've got a fair bit of coverage here on your debt service coverage. You got a lot of cushion. Recession, you just scale down. You only make $100,000 instead of $225,000. It would be interesting to dig in. Yeah. Exactly. Where are your customers coming from?

Are these tourists? Are they locals? It looked like a number of locals from the pick. pictures, which is good. But then you come back to that problem, you said. How can you tell? There's no, put the listing back up there.

Show us some photos. I did notice a bunch of classic cars in some of the pictures. Yeah, car tours are a big deal. Yep. My son is into renovating classic cars. He bought one from 1940.

He goes to the club with all the other guys who do this, he says he's the only one under 70. Yeah. It does this hobby. I was like, son. I believe it. There's no girls at this son. That's what I thought. Yeah, those people. Oh, yeah, that was like a special event. That's, that's awesome. Yeah, there's actually quite a few. I'm not on their Google listing. There's quite a few, you know, classic car situations going on. So I think this place might be a stop on some cross-country tours or like it enjoys a reputation, which is cool. You can get married here. Did you see that listing?

I thought this was a drive-in movie theater at first. And so I started Googling around, y'all, there is a website. I found a page on drive-in movie.com. And it's all the drive-in theaters for sale across North America. It's updated in March of 2026. And there's, Michael, there's one in Houston for $5.5 million. Like, when you go down a rabbit hole, it's amazing the things that you find that you never would find otherwise. I never thought I'd be on drive-in movie theaters for sale.

All right. Would you guys buy a drive-in movie theater in 2026? Yeah, I think the nostalgia of it. It's like why Cracker Barrel still survives. That place is dying. You need to watch my video. That's because they tried to rebrand. And they went away from their core audience.

You need to watch my video. You need to watch my film video. No. Do you know how hard I work on these YouTube videos? Michael's like, I actually know about this. I did all the reasons. Everything else I said was BS, but this I know something. All right. I will watch the video, Michael, and then we will have a discussion.

Cracker barrel is actually dying because people's vacation habits are changing and their consumption habits of food are changing. Those are the two major reasons. Their customers are all dying. Their customers are too old. Yeah. I mean, is that the problem with this business too? This driving business?

I mean, the thing I like about this, you'll see the people actually look more like our collective age, elder millennial Gen X, is the menu looks much more like the type of food we eat if we're like country people going out all the Saturday night. Tanger tops, country burgers and stuff. It's not chicken fried steak with gravy all over it.

I think these guys have done. a nice job of staying up and modern with the with the tastes nice i downloaded the asset list what's interesting there's a little nugget in here they were approached to be on the national historic registry um but did not want to comply with the guidelines so they turned it down the guidelines say you can't look like a flea market probably i don't want to clean up you can actually you can get property tax abatement if you do that you can usually lock in your property taxes for 10 or 20 years, they won't escalate. Oh, here's your value creation that that's all I don't know about.

Get designated National Historic Register, get your property taxes wiped, and then it really pencils. It's called the Bailey Bill, and it'll allow you, you have to either locally or through like the National Register, you have to qualify. It also, though, will give you significant funds for, like, renovations that help preserve the historic integrity of the building. So you can't just be like, you know, know, I'm putting in a massive kitchen.

But if you're doing things that are qualified expenses, it can create a lot of value. But usually you have to be spending money. Is this coming from our taxes? Yes. Bailey bill, yeah. Yep. You know what this is also potentially interesting as?

The initial seedings in cornerstone of like a holding company that takes over this town. Like the next thing you buy is the local hotel. and like the local whitewater rafting company, and you kind of share staff and you cross promo, and before you know it, you've got 750K cash flow, and this is the mayor. Snellsville, North Carolina.

And you get elected mayor and you wave all your property taxes. But like, you could do that. I mean, this is a solid cash flowing asset. And as proof, in the assets list, there are only two assets, that do not convey.

You want to know what they are? A 2021 camper and a 2025 Mercedes. Nice. That's perfect. That shows that they're actually making real money. That's right. I like it. All right.

Anything further to say on this one? I like it. If you want to live in Street High, North Carolina, you should bid. Perfect for somebody. If you buy it, let me know. I want to come visit you. Yeah, we'll do a field trip.

Yeah, let's record an episode. We'll go visit Travis and we'll do a live episode of the Spruce Pine City Drive-In, the iconic city drive-in. Love it. All right. If you guys like this one, this is the first drive-in restaurant we've done. We have done other restaurants. We've done franchises. We've done hotels.

I don't know if we've done a drive-in movie theater. But there are 450 other episodes of Acquisitions Anonymous on our website at ACQUanon.com. Go check it out. Get on our email list. We will email you all the episodes. if you're not an audio person, if you want to just read about new deals for sale, and then check back in another couple days.

We'll have a fresh episode for you of acquisitions anonymous.