Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - The Pirate Liquor Store Making $300K a Year

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

In this episode, the hosts discuss a pirate-themed liquor store in Anchorage, Alaska that has doubled revenue under its current owner, boasts a government-protected moat through limited liquor licenses, and somehow convinced all four hosts to give it a thumbs up.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/have-a-pirate-life-liquor-store-2-55m-gross-306k-sde/2477852/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:Viso Business Capital — Get the right SBA loan tailored to your acquisition needs with Heather Endresen’s firm. Sign up for a free live Q&A on SBA loans at https://www.visocap.net and click “Zoom Sign Up” in the top-right corner.Acquisition Lab – Your fast-track to business ownership. Get hands-on support, world-class resources, and join a top-tier community of acquisition entrepreneurs. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.acquisitionlab.com and mention Acquisitions Anonymous!The hosts dive into what makes this business so fascinating: an extraordinarily transparent seller who published detailed financials online, a unique "bush delivery" business serving remote Alaskan communities, and a remarkable growth story that saw revenue nearly double over the last six years. They debate whether the growth is sustainable, discuss the complexities of Alaska's liquor licensing regulations, and ultimately arrive at a rare unanimous conclusion: if you live in Anchorage, this might be an incredible business to own.Key Highlights:- Pirate-themed Anchorage liquor store generating $2.55M revenue and $306K SDE with a $1.1M asking price- Current owner reportedly works only 10 hours per week using remote POS management systems- Revenue nearly doubled from $1.2M to $2.5M between 2020 and 2025- Alaska's liquor license quota system creates a powerful regulatory moat limiting new competition- All four hosts gave the deal a rare unanimous thumbs up, provided the buyer already lives in AlaskaSubscribe 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]

Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous. Today's episode enabled me, Michael, to win the co-host of the day award, mostly because I gave it to myself as the award. But we found a deal that was in Alaska, freaking fascinating. And if you stick around at the end, you will be shocked to hear that all four of us loved the deal. Like, we loved the deal. So stick around. Enjoy the episode.

Here it is. Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous. Bye. set acquisitions anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. I can thumbs downing on just the plus inventory loan. Hi, Heather here.

When I'm not breaking down deals with these guys, I'm helping people get the right SBA loans for their business acquisitions. Because when you're buying a business, the best financing isn't one size fits all. There's the best rate, fastest to close, the specific loan structure that you need, or a little of all of those things.

That's why my company, Vizzo Business, capital works with over 30 different lenders to find you the best funding in less time and with less friction so you can focus on the deal sign up for a free live Q&A session on SBA loans at visocap.net then click zoom sign up in the top right corner that's v i s o cap dot net and click zoom sign up i was debating whether i could tell the non-pg joke about bedrock that i pulled off at my house today about, you know, if things are going well, the bed rocks, but I can't go there. So anyway, bedrock quality of earnings, everybody, the most PG family friendly quality of earnings firm. So, uh, we were comparing swag. I have my aquacil

shirt on Bill and, uh, and Michael has a new bedrock swag. Bill's got his, I'm a, I'm a very well off W-2 employee swag on. Well, it looks good. Do you have, Have, like, new skinny guy clothes that you're wearing now, Bill? Have you gotten to get a guy? It's like, I have, like, no clothes that fit me. Like, I go in the, I'm like, you know, in your head, you're like, I'm going somewhere in night. I'll just wear that. And then I go in the closet and I put that on. And I'm like, I can't wear this. Like, looks ridiculous. So I'm like always scrambling. Like, all of the things that I have in my head that I can wear. So many of them don't work anymore. I just got a poncho, slim fit shirt. Have you had one of those? I have several of those. I love my, well, I have several of those. None of them fit me any longer. Yeah. If you're out there listening, you also could be a sponsor of the podcast and we will wear whatever you want on air.

Oh, why don't we have clothing sponsors? That would be awesome. Wait, are we recording? This is live. Yeah, it is live. Yeah. Somebody send this to Boncho. Hey, this is what happens when you show of one minute late. One minute late, classic Michael just hits record. I was looking at the group chat as I'm logging in and I see the URL. It says it's a pirate life liquor store. And I was like, oh, heck yes. So today is choose your own adventure.

I have two deals to present to you. One is your opportunity, Bill, to have a pirate life in Alaska. Or number two, a very straightforward, easy to understand license plate engraving business. Ooh. I like both of those. Interesting. So I was really in on the liquor store, the pirate life thing. I thought this was going to go great with my pizza boat until you told me,

was in Alaska. I'm just curious about how you can have a pirate life in Alaska. Well, that sounds like we should do that one then. All right. Tell me more. Tell me more, Captain Gerley. Captain Gurdly. All right, this is by sell. You can have a pirate life. It's a liquor store that does $2.55 million gross revenue and $306,000 in seller's discretionary earnings located in Anchorage, Alaska. The asking price is a million. 0.072, so $1.1 million. Cash flow is $300,000. So build GPT, I think that's a 3.1 times multiple. So what I see. And what's interesting is, so you said, EBITDA is 184, SDE is 306. Right. So this is exactly 3.5X SDE. We can talk about maybe why those

numbers differ, but they're asking for three and a half times exactly, like to the penny, SD. Fascinating. Okay. Well, somebody backed into that one. Gross revenue. There's a typo, I hope. $255,759,901.

Where do you think the typo is on this? I mean, they don't do, they don't do $25 million in revenue. Oh, well, it says up here the gross is $2.55 million. Oh, okay. Okay, there we go. So they, they've got to. There's a missing guess here. But what's funny is that their total sales are actually $2.557,599.

For 0.01 cents, which they've put in here. And it, well, to show they can't do math, that means it should be 2.56, not to be full Gen X on this, but that it rounds up, not rounds down. Anyway, go ahead, Mills. I just saw that this business has been around since 1940. I'm jumping ahead, but that is amazing. And the photo here, Bill, looks like a liquor store that's been around for 80 years.

The pirate life is timeless, Michael. Look at this photo. I love it. It's like there's snow everywhere. It's like a winter wonderland. There's counters. Oh, it's a captain. Sparrow Liquor Store.

Yeah, I don't know if you can see. There's like a life-sized pirate ship rising out of the roof of this place. Are you kidding me? Yeah. This is amazing. Anchorage, Alaska. So it is near the ocean, I mean, but not the traditional Caribbean pirate that you might imagine.

Oh, you got to keep reading. This gets better. Yeah, tell us more. Keep reading. All right. Business description. The owner only works 10 hours a week has 10,000 plus. members and manages the point of sale remotely. Captain Sparrow is a highly profitable liquor store

in Anchorage, Alaska, generating $2.55 million annual gross revenue with $306,000 in seller's discretionary earnings. It was acquired by Fuji Inc. in 2014 and known by many senior customers as the very first liquor store in Anchorage. This recession-proof business has built a dominant market position with over 10,000 loyalty members and maintains a stellar 4.3 Google rating. Before I go on, Heather, is this like the Fuji that makes film out of Japan, or who is this Fuji Inc? I mean, that's the only Fuji I would know of. If you refer to Fuji Inc., that's what it sounds like to me, which is very strange, why they would buy a liquor store in Anchorage. And in 2014, so are they the current owners and they're selling it? That's how I read it, these Fuji guys currently own it and are selling it.

The owner, okay, business highlights. The owner only works 10 hours per week with remote point of sale management capabilities. They have a unique pirate theme that creates strong, barren differentiation in the market. They have an exclusive rewards point system, the only one of its kind in the area. They have proven resilience that they thrive during the pandemic while competitors struggled, strong barrier to entry due to Anchorage's strict liquor license limitations, 10,000 loyalty members, and seamless operations with detailed work manuals, which is funny because when you look at the pictures of it,

like the place looks really messy, and there's a bunch of stuff written here on a piece of paper throughout the whole thing. So anyway, sorry to be doubting. Hey, I have encountered businesses that are run very tightly on paper. Yeah, it is possible. annual revenue, we talked about this, inventory value is $210,000 and they have $100,000 for the fixtures. A significant untapped potential exists in Bush orders to remote Alaskan communities, assuming those Alaska communities allow alcohol. The business currently generates thousands of monthly revenue from these orders through website sales alone with no paid advertising.

An active owner could substantially scale this revenue stream through targeted marketing. Before we go on, are you guys familiar with how alcohol works? in like rural Alaska. Have you ever looked at this? Are you? Yes, I am. Are you asking? So there are certain communities there

where the indigenous people have been so ravaged by alcohol that it is totally prohibited in the town. Like you can't. By alcoholism, you mean? By alcoholism, yes. Yes. And so it's like a huge felony, like to fly or take alcohol into these places.

Even such to the extent that the guys who do these like Bush flights, out to these little towns to make sure they have food and supplies and all that kind of stuff. Like they are held liable even if somebody else sneaks alcohol, beer, liquor, or whatever, onto their plane. Like, and they can lose their license. Like, there are crazy stories about happening. So it is a, it is a fascinating difference between kind of what a dry county or a dry city is here in the U.S. Interesting. Okay.

So there are parts of Alaska where just hardcore no alcohol, but clearly not this place because there's a open liquor store. Yep. On Anchorage, yeah. Which is by the way, where everyone in Alaska lives. I mean, there are like 10 people in Alaska and nine of them are in Anchorage. It's totally accurate. Yeah. Well, and people don't understand how few people there are.

Like, San Antonio is like the number 30 biggest MSA in the country. And we have 2.8 million people here. Alaska has half that in the whole state. It's 738,000 total population in all of Alaska. And the Anchorage population is what? Anchorage population is 286,000. Wow. Okay.

I think they have more senators, Bill, than they do have House of Representatives. Oh, yeah. Wow. Interesting. But Bill, you're actually, the Anchorage metropolitan area is 405,000. So more than half of all of Alaska residents live in the greater Anchorage. Metropolitan area. So if you're going to put a liquor store anywhere,

this is where you want it to be. Although the bush delivery thing is kind of interesting. Can you imagine how much a beer costs if they bring it to you on a bush plane? A bush plane or with the sled dogs or something? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. All right.

The business operates as a well-established local landmark with streamlined processes, remote point of sale, blah, blah, blah, talks about that, loyal customer base. The seller is willing to offer a two-week training with part-time advisory support for several months and detailed operational manuals. Additional business information and manuals are available on the company website. The owner is transitioning to a new lifestyle as children have become independent, and it represents an exceptional opportunity to acquire a profitable, semi-absentee business and a protective market with substantial growth potential. Six employees, three full-time and three-part-time. It is an 1100 square foot space with optimized layout and one-man daytime operation ensures low overhead.

Sale includes the built-in remote point of sale system, and a $200,000 inventory. So it does say, and Bill, this ties into one of the things I like you love to talk about, which is competition. The Anchorage Liquor Market has strict license limitations creating a strong barrier to entry for new competitors. Interesting. So you can't just roll into town and get a liquor license. Oh, and they have a website.

Yeah, I was going to say this website is amazing. It also, when you go to the website, it says Bush order, career or business for sale. I'm just on the homepage. It's on the homepage. So we're not outing them. We're actually helping them. We're increasing distribution here. Oh, I just looked at who the lister, who made the listing.

So that's what I was going to say. Serious Fujimoto as in Fuji Inc. Ah, okay. I googled and found their liquor license application from 2021 to 2022. And there's a lot of info on there. But Sirius Fujimoto owns 100% of this business. Okay. Interesting.

Wow. Heather, look at these income numbers on the tax return. He put them on his website. This is the best listing. I love it. Details. So we know if this is really good or not. It feels like the moat here is, of course, the license.

And he didn't see anything. Wait, he put his P&L website on this website. Wow. That's the first. I've never seen it. Oh, look at that. I've never seen this. This is so sick.

So which means all of his customers, there's a detailed, if you're on YouTube with us right now, there's a detailed QuickBooks Dump, P&L, downloadable from Captain Sparrow.us, which is their homepage. He's a broken down seasonally.

Their best months are around the holidays. I mean, this is an incredible level of detail. But not only is it an incredible level of transparency, and the way to do it, are you guys looking at these financials? So his gross income in 2020 was $1.2 million. In 2025, it is $2.5 million. He has doubled the business. He has doubled a liquor store in a relatively small town in six years. That's incredible on the top line. And that has taken SDE from $159,000 in 2020 to $300,000 in 2025. I have got to know what this guy

serious Fujimoto did to double a liquor store that's been around since 1940, been around forever. No one else has managed to do this. And in the last since COVID, he doubled the top and bottom line. This deal is so sick. I am so proud of myself for finding this. Let me just take a moment.

You're so proud of Gordley Claw for finding this? Yeah. My AI bot founded overnight. In 2019, he was having $67,000 revenue month. And now he's having like $250,000 revenue months. He's crushing it. Is it all, do you think, the Bush deliveries that he started delivering liquor? Could be.

It could be that's a completely new sales channel. He opened up and grew, and that could be it. There's also a retail. There's a membership model. Yeah. What do we think that? I don't know, but on the website it says membership benefits, there's four items. One is alcoholic depression.

I'm not making this up. This is on their homepage. This is how you get pirate. Depression is one of your benefits. Yes, I'm telling you, pull it up on YouTube. You go out to the homepage. It says be a pirate to get points. Membership benefits.

Alcoholic depression, get points with every purchase, more liver damage, and to be a happy skeleton. You may have the membership in 60 seconds of the store counter. So I wonder, I wonder if this is. like a, is it possible that it's a liquor store that you can't buy if you're not a member? Gurdley's watching the AI videos on a homepage. No, this is not an AI video. This is the real thing.

I literally think the owners are Japanese immigrants and they are running it like a Japanese immigrant. Yeah, like super hardcore. Do you guys think this membership is like, you know, pay $100 a month and get $100 a month the store credit or something. So it's making people buy more liquor. Yeah, yeah. It is. That's what it looks like.

Pretty cool. Smart. That would be crazy. Oh, then they have an AI video. I'm not going to click on that one. This is their 10th anniversary video. So they have their 6th anniversary video and their 10th anniversary video. And maybe that's his, like how many years he's owned it?

He's owned it. Since it's been around since 1940. One of these guys has got to be Mr. Fuji. Yeah, I think so. So this is an interesting approach that we have, I don't think ever seen this much disclosure on the podcast where somebody just bears all. They just say on their company website, I'm selling, this is why I'm selling, here's all the info. I think like everybody's mind goes to like this could totally come back and bite you because now all your customers can find your profitability. And like there's just so many things that could go wrong.

But I mean, is it? Like, is this going to work for this guy? It could. I mean, it's not like it's, you know, disgustingly profitable and everybody is going to be upset at how much money he's extracting from them. You know, like, he provides a needed service in the town of Anchorage. There can't be that many liquor stores. And he makes $300,000 a year doing it, which is probably a lot of money in Anchorage, but it's not, you know, it's not filthy. So I don't, people are so afraid of it, you know, maybe the employees, I think one of the

biggest risks here is the amount of line item detail that he is exposed. So like if if I work at this liquor store, which by the way, all the employees will eventually see this because one of them will see it and they'll send it around. If I work here, I can see the payroll expenses by month and I can know how much I make and I can kind of figure out, I can guess accurately or inaccurately either way enough to cause a problem for the owner how much everyone else is making as well and ask for a raise. I think that is kind of, the biggest risk here is your employees realize that there's room in the P&L to give them raises or they're underpaid relative to their peers, et cetera.

But let's contrast that where, you know, the U.S., we have very limited data that's publicly available. Do you know in the U.K., all companies' financial statements are public? Little small. Yeah, I just looked it up to be sure I was right. It's statutorily annual accounts for U.K. limited companies and PLCs. are legally required to be filed with companies' house where they become part of the public register that anyone can search for free.

I've been told this before by people looking to buy businesses in the UK and just the contrast that you could actually this kind of information is available for every business that's out there, whether for sale or not. So I think in this country, we're so the opposite of that, that this is very shocking,

but maybe it's not so scary to just go ahead and put your financials there and cut right to the chase and get a deal. Yeah, a taboo in our culture about talking about money and finance and selling and all those things, which is, I don't want to say it's uniquely American, but it is very American. Yeah. Yeah. We are considering how capitalist and money is we are.

Yeah. True. Yeah. So we don't know. The question, though, okay, so this guy, Mr. Food, I'm going to call him Mr. Fuji, has grown this business. He's doubled it in six years in Anchorage, Alaska. He says sort of your next growth leg is. going to be these bush orders. But as Mills taught us, more than half of the population of Anchorage is

already, or of Alaska rather, is already in Anchorage. And of the people in the bush, I mean, how many of them are even in the areas around Anchorage? I imagine it gets pretty dispersed after that. And as Mills also said, it's got to be pretty price prohibitive, you know, to get a bottle of Captain Morgan or whatever delivered to your bush camp. So I just can't see. Like how much are we really going to grow on the bush orders? What's crazy, Yol, is that, like, he has, I mean, he's done some amazing things. On the website, you can click the tab that says Bush Order. And then there's like a sample cost worksheet where it breaks out all of the costs.

The shipping, there's got to be a minimum or something like that. And I didn't have time to delve into it. But the shipping fee is only like, you know, $35. But it's like the example. is Smearingoff, 750 milliliters, quantity 14, $5 packaging fee, $35 shipping fee, and a 15% city tax at the city where it's going. I mean, he makes this very easy for people to figure out, which tells you that there's got to be a ton of barriers. Like Michael said, there's got to be a ton of barriers to people having done this the way that the status quo always does it. Are you ready to take a leap into

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make your business ownership dream of reality, visit AcquisitionLab.com today to learn more and schedule your free consultation. And when you do, be sure to tell them the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast sent you. I mean, what's fascinating about this is, you know, the Japanese are a famously extremely high trust society. And here this guy just moved to Anchorage, Alaska and said, you know what, I'm just going to pretend like it's still Japan. Like in Japan, you can go out and if you leave a hundred dollar, like there's tons of stories. Heather, you may have heard these where like $10,000 in cash gets turned into like a police station. Because people are like so about harmony that they're like,

I would never just keep that money because how would the other person feel? But it's fascinating, this guy like basically lived that Japanese culture and then just brought it to Anchorage, Alaska, and he's doing the same thing with how he's selling the business, which is like, well, I trust everybody. I'm just going to tell them everything. We'll see what happens. But the information out there.

Yeah, exactly. I love it. I think there is something refreshing about this. It reminds me of the Lego. mini-figure episode that we did, like where the business is so unique. Like, you can't say, you know, hey, I'm selling, you know, pirate-inspired liquor store and Anchorage and, like, hide it, you know? And that's like a lot of the value, I think, is like what it is and where it is.

And it was kind of the same with that Lego mini-figure episode, like, whatever, 400 episodes ago, where all the information, like, you could get at, like, it was searchable, it was Googledable. We didn't sign an NDA, like always. But like we found an, you know, basically the guy's brother, I think, listed the business for him. And it was all very transparent. I think that approach is like shockingly refreshing if done right. Oh, oh. I just figured out why they keep mentioning the liquor license thing. Would you like to know? Yes. Yes. Alaska has a quota system on retail liquor licenses. Alaska limits the number of alcohol license issued it per community using a quota.

system. One license per every 3,000 residents in a given census area. Generally speaking, the quota for most license types has been met in most larger communities like Anchorage. That means a new packaged liquor store license may not be available at all as the cap may have already been hit. That's the enterprise value. Yeah. Yeah. Now, that being said, I'm looking, they are far from the only liquor store in Anchorage. I mean, there is one, two blocks from him. The brown jugs. Spinnard and Northern Lights liquor store. And then probably 10 blocks from him is North Pole Lickers. They're all thematic.

North Pole Licker, sadly, does not appear to be Santa Claus themed. Unfortunately, the pirate theme kind of takes the cake. And there's in and out liquor, which is not in and out. The burger place. The burgers, yeah. But the brown jug guys have two locations, which is interesting. thing. And there is also a Costco wholesale that comes up when I search liquor. And I can't confirm that they do or don't have liquor, but the fact that he's thriving despite Costco being in

town is good. Yeah. I mean, I think the real crux of this is can you own this business and not live in Anchorage? No way. I don't think so. Although it does say remote point of sale system like five times. And he says he only works 10 hours a week. But if the proverbial shit hits the fan for this business and you're, let's just say hypothetically in South Carolina and your manager decides, like, you know what, I quit, like you've got to go to Anchorage and like, you know, stock the shelves. Every day to get there, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think you've got to, I think you got to be at least close by. But there's no such thing as close by. I mean, you can live in Seattle and you're still forever away from it.

Yeah. Heather, how could somebody finance this deal? There is this program called the SBA program that could be used. And actually, you know, SBA loans famously, even before the whole ETA boom hit our space, at least in the Los Angeles area where I live, liquor store sales as a business acquisition, those were done with SBA loans for as long back as I can remember. This is like a type of business that traded sort of regularly. and where people sort of understood it as, you know, the moat is usually the liquor license and the transfer of the liquor license itself is really kind of the value that they were buying and looking at the, you know, the revenue and the EBITDA, they were all pretty consistent, one to the next. This one is a little fascinating because it has grown, and I wouldn't, I can't still think of how he did that. But these are easy to finance with an SBA loan. I would imagine there's significant inventory in a business like this.

Like working capital is probably non-trivial. Right. It's retail. It's retail. 200,000. Yeah, 200,000 of inventory on the shelf. And that's got to be included. I believe they said it was included in the price. So that's easy. The inventory.

If that's included in the price, I mean, that makes the price even more reasonable. Yeah. Right? It's three and a half times with 200K of inventory. So it's three times probably. Somewhere else, though, on his website, so I think on Biz by Sell, it says it's included.

On his own website, he says it's a million 72 plus inventory around 200,000. So a little bit of conflicting info there. Okay. I think it's clear Mr. Fuji does not have a broker. Yes, his P&Ls are on the website. So that also means I was going through the PNL. There's some significant scrubbing that you have to do.

He's got taxes and taxes and licenses line item that's like 80 and 90,000 and then goes to 8,000 in the trailing 12. He's got, and then of course he's got ad backs that take him from 180 to 300. You know, I got questions about that. So like, but this is where a lot of times you will find alpha in small business deals is in the mess. Like if you're willing to wade through, figure out. what the financials business actually are, and be it appropriately, you can very often buy great businesses that way. But this time, you actually get a huge head start because before you

even put in your LOI, you have all this detail. Whereas, you know, most buyers out there are getting very limited information before the LOI and getting most of this kind of detail right after the LOI, which I think is, I personally think is crazy for business brokers to do that the way they do, because that's why we have so many LOIs that don't close. You know, they're not getting enough, they're not getting sufficient information before the LOI. This is nice. You would get it.

You could actually construct an LOI that could close. Yeah, you're right. He does acknowledge on his website, he has a link to like business transfer process. And he acknowledges, I think, the most difficult part about this deal, which is that the state board of, it's actually the municipality of Anchorage,

can they have to review and approve your purchase of this business. So like he has a very like formulaic approach to what it's going to take to buy this business. Phase three, which is approvals in closing, he estimates to take four to six months. Like you've got to do a dog and pony show with the municipality to say why you are the best buyer for this business. Which means you pretty much have to move there because they're probably not going to approve you if you don't. You probably have to already live there because. you're not going to move there before you get the liquor license approved, and they're going to want you to be there to approve it.

So you need to already be there. Yeah. Yeah. This is such a fascinating case. It also kind of, like, is listing this thing on BIS Buy Sell the right answer here? I mean, there are, as we've already established, about 400,000 people in the world who are qualified to buy this because they already live in Anchorage. Right.

And nobody in the continental, I mean, what are the odds somebody that's not already an anchorage is going to buy this, like almost zero? It seems like you just post a sign on the town bulletin board, and it would be more effective than this. You know, believe it or not, coincidentally, I just got off one of my phone calls today is I have two searchers that are looking in Alaska. They live there. And I was just on the phone with one of them today. And a lot of the choices, I'm going to talk to them about this because I don't think this is what they're going for. but a lot of the other businesses are also tourism related. And those are.

Yeah, seasonality. And yeah. So, I mean, this one actually would be a lot cleaner from a cash flow perspective. Wow. Yeah. So it's fascinating. Maybe putting it on biz buy, sell, made it to acquisitions anonymous, which led Heather to tell her Alaska searchers and that's how they sell the business.

Maybe. Just maybe. So zoom it out a little bit. here. Liquor stores are good businesses, right? Like, I always sort of assumed, you know, it's like death taxes and liquor and, you know, things get bad and liquor sales go up. Like, is, is a liquor store a good thing to buy as a searcher? I mean, if, if this is the kind of business you're okay running, you know, you are going to have to be in the store, you know, you're going to have to manage the employees and watch the, you know, inventory and make sure you're not getting ripped off

by employees, that kind of thing. But sure, it's a, it's a completely legitimate retail business to own. They are always going to be very consistent. And, you know, I don't think you have years where you lose money. You know, you're always making money. And this guy got creative and figured out a way to grow one pretty significantly. So, yeah, I think it's pretty interesting. It's interesting to me, Heather, that this is not considered a vice business for the SBA, where there's other things that are very clearly like, you know, anything gambling related, payday lending. Like even a lot of like, vape shops, right? And like things like that are, you know, hard pass for the SBA. But I don't know. It's just an image. But yeah, I guess this is one that I guess is sort of

normalized in society. And yes, SBA loans, like I said, they've been used for liquor source sales as far back as I can remember. And that's a long time. So they've always been okay. Interesting. Yeah. Can you get ready to rate this deal? Okay. Can you roll these up? I mean, I would think in a town like this with limited liquor stores, if you could buy four of them, I mean, well, you know what the issue is built? So the blue law is very state by state. So like in South Carolina, for example, the owner of a liquor store can only own up to three. So you have these like mega stores, like even a total wine or something like that that's a huge chain. They have to do the analysis and say like, we're not going to saturate one market. We're going to move to multiple different cities because we're capped. And like, that's a totally different law than North Carolina versus Georgia versus Florida versus Alaska. Like you have to almost be like a professional like liquor, you know, lawyer to understand the nuance state by state. Interesting.

All right. So you probably can't roll these up because the liquor board is probably going to say no, bueno, if you try to own three of them in Anchorage. I also suspect that Anchorage is probably, I've heard crazy things just about the culture up in Alaska, about how it's, you know, a little bit lawless. It's very Wild West. It's very frontier, as a way to put it. And so I would imagine they probably look kindly on carpetbaggers coming to their town and buying their liquor stores. And especially if you didn't live in their town and own this liquor store, I would imagine all sorts of things. would not go your way and you wouldn't understand why. Yeah.

Michael, exceptional. This is great. Host of the day, self-nominated. Let's go. I mean, co-host the day, sorry. All right. So now it's time to say if we'd buy it. If I lived in Anchorage, I would buy this.

And the reason for that is it seems to have a moat, limited liquor licenses. You're going to live there? I would buy this as one kind of block in the foundation of a holding company. And you don't need to roll up five liquor stores, but to have one chunk in your holding company that throws off 300 grand of cash flow reliably come hell or high water, that's pretty nice. Yeah, you own like this and a property management business and like a hardware store and like a dog tourism company, you know, like a couple things.

Yeah, an auto repair shop. That's the like, you know, that's the group. Yes. This is basically with the Chenmark guys, right? Instead of Portland, you're in the tundra. Exactly. Yes. If you live in the tundra, this is a great long-term asset to hold.

Yeah, I agree. Calling my clients. Hold on. We got four thumbs up. From a pirate-themed liquor store in Anchorage, Alaska. Let's go. Let's go. Big shoes to fill, though, Mr. Fuji.

You know, very clearly show up working on your first day and you're not Mr. Fuji and you're going to bring people that you're as fun as he is, because he seems pretty fun. He's pretty fun. You walk into so many businesses, mom and pa businesses in Japan, and they look like this, like little retailers.

And there's clearly somebody who has made it their mission in life to run that ramen shop or that stationary shop or whatever to be the best run stationary shop in the history of stationary shops. And they're just totally content. So this is,

I think that's one of the dangers of this deal. Like, do you walk in and start running at like a slop? be American, like raising my hand as one of those, or do you keep running that like Mr. Fuji, who has run perhaps the tightest ship in the history of ships of liquor stores I've ever seen? No pun intended. The tightest pirate ship in history of liquor stores. Love it. Thumbs up. Thumbs up. Thumbs up. That's so awesome. Me too. SBA loan. Here we go. Let's go. If you need one, please call Heather Anderson.

Yeah, please call that. Love it. All right. If you guys like this, I think we have done one or two liquor stores in the past. None as cool as Mr. Fugis. So I'm bigger than Mr. Fugis, I think, but not as cool. And you can find them on our website, acqueu anon.com. You can search liquor store and you will find them. You can also get on our email list there and we will email you the episodes in case you think our jokes are corny and these episodes are too long. We will email to the episodes in text so you can just read them and see what we're covering and know, oh, that's something I should go listen to the audio of if you're not

podcast everyday person. So go get on our email list at our website. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous.