Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Would You Buy This Waterfront Restaurant for Millions?

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

In this episode the hosts talk about buying two established Beaufort, South Carolina restaurants generating roughly $6.3M in combined revenue for a ~$2.3M asking price—and why the leases, shared management, seasonality, and limited growth potential could make or break the acquisition.Business Listings:— https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/saltus-river-grill-premier-waterfront-restaurant-opportunity/2534360/— https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/hearth-wood-fired-pizza/2536726/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/newsletterSponsors:Inzo Technologies — When you acquire a business, you inherit its accumulated IT and cybersecurity problems too. Inzo helps acquisition entrepreneurs evaluate technology risk during due diligence and manage cybersecurity, IT, and voice after closing, including a complimentary IT risk audit of your target company. Learn more at inzotechnologies.com/etaAcquisition Lab — Buying a business can be the biggest financial decision of your life, and Acquisition Lab gives acquisition entrepreneurs a community, experienced advisors, education, and deal-search tools to help navigate it. Join a free live roundtable at acquisitionlab.com/roundtables and tell them Acquisitions Anonymous sent you.This episode starts with Saltus River Grill, an established waterfront restaurant in the heart of downtown Beaufort, South Carolina. Saltus has been operating since 2003, generates roughly $3.55M in annual revenue, and occupies a prime Bay Street location for about $14K per month in rent. The restaurant has an asking price of roughly $1.1M and benefits from an established brand, waterfront setting, upscale menu, tourism traffic, and more than two decades of operating history.Then the deal gets more interesting: Michael and Mills discover that Hearth Wood Fired Pizza, located in the front of the same building, is also for sale. Hearth generates approximately $2.8M in revenue with an asking price of about $1.2M. Put the two businesses together and you're looking at approximately $6.3M in combined revenue for a ~$2.3M asking price, with combined rent of roughly $26K per month. The hosts debate whether the restaurants should effectively be treated as one acquisition given their proximity and likely operational overlap. Plums, another restaurant under the same ownership group, isn't confirmed to be for sale but creates an important diligence question around how integrated the group's employees, management, vendors, and other resources really are.The biggest risk may be the leases. A buyer needs enough lease runway to finance the acquisition, operate it successfully, and eventually have something transferable to the next buyer. Michael and Mills also dig into Beaufort's seasonality, staffing challenges, the apparent middle-management layer, landlord relationships, and the limited opportunity for explosive growth. Their conclusion is that these appear substantially more transferable than the typical restaurant businesses—but the buyer needs to make the economics work without assuming heroic growth or a huge terminal value.Key Highlights:- $6.3M in combined revenue: Saltus and Hearth are being offered for roughly $2.3M combined.- The lease is critical: Long-term lease terms and renewal options could determine the value of the entire acquisition.- More transferable than most restaurants: Both businesses have established brands, long operating histories, and a built-out management structure.- Shared operations matter: Staffing and management may overlap with Plums, making employee retention and operational separation key diligence items.- Limited growth upside: The hosts believe this deal should be underwritten around steady cash flow rather than aggressive revenue growth.Subscribe 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. Welcome back to Acquisitions Anonymous. This is the internet's number one podcast on buying, selling, and operating small businesses. And today's episode was really fun for me because it is a restaurant in Beaufort, South Carolina, where I go on vacation. It's a restaurant that I know. But not only that, halfway through the episode, there's a surprise reveal, and we find out that the sister restaurant on the same street on the other side of the building is also for sale by the same owner. So we pivot the episode. It's not just one restaurant. It is a restaurant group that is kind of in the prime location in the South Carolina vacation town. And actually has three restaurants we figure out all in the same strip that we think you can buy all together. So it's a really cool study in actually a pretty well-run

transferable restaurant that operates three iconic properties in a South Carolina coastal town. So really cool. If you're interested in restaurants, this is a good one. So without further ado, please enjoy this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisition Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory lock. When you close the deal, you inherit the cyber and IT problems that have been piling up for years. Inzo Technologies, that's INZO, helps acquisition entrepreneurs evaluate technology risks during due diligence

and manage cybersecurity, IT, and voice after close. CEO Nick Acres acquired Inzo and recently led the company through its first ad-on acquisition. He brings a buyer-operator's perspective to what needs to be uncovered before the wire and stabilized once ownership changes hands. Enzo offers a complementary IT risk audit of your target company to help surface the biggest risks in plain English and deliver a 30-day plan to reduce exposure and lower the risk of downtime. visit enzo technologies.com slash ETA and mention acquisitions anonymous. That's I-N-Z-O-Technologies.com slash ETA. Mills, happy Friday, man. If you weren't hungry already, this episode is going to weigh your appetite. This is great. So it's just me and Mills today, which means we have to do a deal from North or South Carolina. So we found a good one. This is a restaurant in Beaufort, South Carolina. Mills

Do you know where Buford is? Oh, yeah, been many of times. Yeah. So Buford is, for those who are not South Carolina geography aficionados, is in kind of the southern tip, the southeastern tip of South Carolina. I drive through there because we go to the beach near there. So I've been going through Buford since I was a kid. So I know this downtown really, really well.

Buford is kind of like the last town before an archipelago of islands in southern South Carolina. It's kind of a beach destination. it's one of these old kind of antebellum South Carolina towns. Imagine like a mini Charleston, very many. I mean, much smaller than Charleston. But they have, I saw this listing, and this is one of the rare non-anonymous listings that we can do on the

show because this is obviously for sale by owner and they just give us the name of the restaurant. So what's cool about this one is if you know downtown Beaufort Bay Street is the street, kind of the main street. It's right on the water. That's where all like, kind of the restaurants and art galleries and the little ice cream parlor for the kids and there's a big kind of park right next to it like Bay Street is like prime for Beaufort. And this restaurant is called Saltis River Grill and it has been there since 2003. It's got maybe one of the best pieces of real estate on Bay Street, like smack in the middle of everything. So I saw this and

this isn't just any restaurant. This is like kind of an iconic restaurant in downtown Beaufort. So let me tell you a little bit more about it. It has gross revenue of $3.5 million, which I think is pretty good for a restaurant in a pretty small town. Yeah, with seasonality. With definitely seasonality. So like $3.5 million, they're moving food. This is kind of like a higher-end restaurant.

Like there's a kind of fish over a risotto here pictured. Like that's probably a $30 dish on this menu, which is in a small South Carolina town, expensive. It says, an exceptional opportunity to acquire one of Beaufort's most recognizable waterfront dining destinations. Saltus River Grill combines an established reputation, coveted Bay Street location, and refined low-country dining experience in the heart of historic downtown Beaufort. It's located at 802 Bay Street with views of the Beaufort River. Saltis River Grill is a rare combination of prime waterfront frisibility, elegant indoor dining, and inviting outdoor patio, and a menu known for fresh seafood, steaks, sushi, and classic favorites. Its setting blends the charm of historic Bufurt with energy of sophisticated coastal restaurant, creating experience that difficult to replicate. The highlights, of course, the premier Bay Street address, the waterfront views, the established brand and strong local recognition and visitor appeal, upscale dining room, full service bar, flexible space for private events, menu featuring seafood steaks, sushi, cocktails, and wine, attractive opportunity for an experienced operator seeking a flagship restaurant.

It's a position for continued success in one of South Carolina low country's most charming and walkable waterfront markets, and that's a fair characterization. The restaurant benefits from steady local demand, tourism, nearby lodging, waterfront attractions, and Beaufort's reputation as a destination for history culture and coastal dining. For a buyer, this is more than a restaurant acquisition. It's the chance to own a signature hospitality asset with an established identity, experience operating foundation, and a waterfront location. Few restaurant opportunities offer this combination of location, reputation, atmosphere, and growth potential. Saltus occupies a distinctive place in Beaufort's dining scene. The next owner can build a strong foundation while exploring opportunities like expanded private events, enhanced bar programming, seasonal promotions, catering, wine dinners, chef-driven specials, and broader marketing to Beaufort's growing visitor and second-home markets. Inquire for more information, financial details, lease information, staffing overview, and operational

materials may be made available upon the execution of a confidentiality agreement. They do give detail on why the owner is selling. He is retiring. The business location is in Beaufort, South Carolina. The real estate is leased. It's 5,000 or so square feet. And the rent is $14,000 a month. To give you an idea of kind of like how small Beaufort is, like this is a prime

piece of waterfront real estate leasing for $160,000 a year. right i think i saw like the location to i don't know if they said this in the description but it's like it's only 1300 square feet inside is what it said but the patio is like i think many multiples of that size if i remember right yes it's got a big patio that you could see the whole waterfront area from the patio you can see they can look through the park to the waterfront it's very pretty it's very nice location um so uh 168 000 of rent and you make 3.5 million in sales. I mean, Melz, what do you think? I think this is really interesting. I am fascinated by the fact that they take the like, we're just going to put it all on the table.

Like, this is who we are. This is how much money we're making. They've outed themselves, which I feel like can be like kind of risky a little bit. But I mean, they're just owning it. Like this is who we are and this is what we're trying to do. I do think that this is, in a family of restaurants. It looks like there's some people online who are associated with this business that are also, it looks like they're, they also are employed by Plums, Inc. And Harts.

Really? Yeah. So it might be like a small restaurant group. I will tell you. So plums is 100 yards away. Also on the same waterfront is much more casual. It has also been there forever. And then Harth Pizza is.

in the same building on the front side. So Saltus is like on the back side facing the water and is the more upscale. Harth pizza is on the front side facing Bay Street and is a little bit more like you take your kids. Yeah. So it's not really clear if this is just one or all of them, you know, that are available. But I think I can't, I think you said it right before we hit record and we're like, oh, let's do this one. The lease is like the majority of the equation here. Yeah. The lease is the whole ball game. I mean, this is a great lease, $14,000 a month. prime spot in Beaufort. But how much longer is left on the lease?

Yeah. I mean, if, if it, what I've seen a lot of times is the restaurateur realizes he's got two years left on his lease or one year left on his lease or he's gotten the notification that his rent is going up materially. And he goes, I'm going to sell the business and then make this someone else's problem. Yeah. You just had a tweet about this. Like in the last day.

Well, not about leases, but about entrepreneurs exiting like and being like, I don't want to exit when things are good. They don't want to wait until like they're at that high. It's like, no, you've got to exit with some runway. Yeah, you got to exit while someone would be excited to buy it versus like people like, oh, I know, I'll squeeze all the juice out of this, wait until there's one year left on my lease and then try to get somebody to hold the bag. That's not how business acquisitions work. People who spend millions of dollars to buy businesses are not that dumb. So it creates like a little bit of a dilemma on, you know, is this really transfer is there enough to transfer?

And maybe, but it all depends on the lease. But if this owner had renewed this lease and all of a sudden you've got 10 years worth of runway and they're like, great, like I've set the table, now you just have to run with it, very, very optimistic. If they're at the tail end of their lease and they're like, don't worry about it, we'll help you negotiate what you need. That creates a lot of uncertainty here. If I had to bet, I bet the guy owns this building.

I'm looking into it right now. So it's owned by an LLC, 303 Associates LLC, and I'm looking into that right now. So if you're with us on YouTube, you can see I've got the building pulled up. This is hearth pizza in the front. It's got, it's like an old kind of Civil War era building on the old main street, as you guys can see. There's a little bit of residential above it, like two stories of residential above it, and then retail on the street side in the front. Saltis, this business that's for sale, is this one on the back of the building.

You can see it has this really nice patio. This is Saltus right here. And it overlooks the park, which is beautiful, and the waterfront. So I bet the restaurateur, either one has a master lease on the building, and he's running two concepts in it, Saltis in the back and Harth in the front. Or he owns the building and is just trying to get in the landlord business. I would say actually the latter is probably the best news for you as a buyer. Like if this guy owns the building, that definitely means he's willing to refresh the lease, you know, at a rate that gets the deal done.

That being said, let's, I mean, you're going to need, if you buy this business with an SBA loan, you're going to need a 10-year lease to match the term of your SBA loan. Now, you might go, okay, great, I got a 10-year lease and a 10-year SBA loan. You got to think, what are you going to do at the end of the 10 years? Like, if you want to sell this business even after five years, you're going to need a new lease. So when you negotiate this lease, don't just think what you're going to need to buy the business. Think also what you're going to need to sell the business when you want to get out of it because you don't want to be in the same position that we're talking about here, that you own a restaurant that's got two years left on a lease. The owner has all this power over you and he's going to triple the rent and you can't sell the business and your equity investments is zero. Now, maybe you've taken enough money out of the meantime, but still, you can mitigate that.

All right. I'm going to steal your screen really quick, Bill. This is the group that owns the building. Okay. So they're a small town, small town, but fairly professional real estate investment company and development company that is not going to just let this building go. You know, it's it's kind of an old school looking. I'll show you another. We're seeing strip malls.

We're seeing hotels. We're seeing multifamily. Round up development. Yeah. This is the guy. I love that real estate records are all public, so you can just find out. So this is Dick Stewart who owns 303 associates, and they're the ones who actually, I'll show you. So you can, you know, this is all publicly available information again, because this is Acquisitions Anonymous.

But I use Landglide, which is a county GIS aggregator and just went to the address. here's Saltus and 303 Associates LLC. So there's at least somewhat of a veil that you can't get through, but you can go to the South Carolina Secretary of State website, which I'll pull up. 303 Associates. Yeah. LLC, Richard H. Stewart on Boundary Street in Buford.

You look him up. So that's how you get to. Yeah, that's how you get to finding out the Dick Stewart. And Bounder Street is like walking distance from this restaurant. So like this guy lives in Buford. like he's probably, he's old school, South Carolina, he's probably wired in. The thing I was going to ask you, Mills, is whether they own the Plums building, which is just down the street. If 303 owns that also, if that's a different landlord or a different owner

that almost certainly locks in that this is leased space. Also, anyway, 303, this seems like a real estate development firm, not a restaurant operator. So I'm willing to bet that the operator has a master lease on this building. and point one a here is the lease on the restaurant, the relationship to hearth pizza in the front and plums. Because the other challenge here is if you have a restaurant, one of the biggest challenges is staffing. If you have three restaurants on the same street,

things get a lot easier because you can have like a bigger pool. You can flow people between restaurants. You know, you can have, if one of your GMs is off, you know, someone in the same building can run up front and babysit it. Like there's a ton of kind of operational, not just cost synergies, but pain in the butt synergies.

It's just like cross-pollination works, you know, in your favor. In a lot of ways. You know, people get bored of working at one. They can go work at the other one. There's a, someone wants a promotion.

You don't have a manager spot open at this one, but you do it the other one. There's just so much flexibility you have. So if even buying power with vendors, you know, liquor distribution, food service, I mean, all kinds of things. I'd be willing to bet these two that are in the same building, share kitchen as well.

Yeah, probably so. I did look, plums is owned by a different landlord. So, okay, so this is probably a restaurant group that is leasing both locations. I wonder if we dug if we would find the other locations for sale as well. Yeah, that's what I was trying to figure out. But it doesn't look like it. Nells, I found it. Did you? Harth Woodfired pizza also for sale.

Ooh. All right. So we're pivoting this episode to. include them both. Let me tell you, listener, here is hearth, Hartwood Fire Pizza that is in front of the same building in the front. Asking price 1.2 million, gross revenue 2.8 million. So in aggregate, out of this building, they're doing 2.8 plus what, 3.5. You're doing over 6 million, like 6.3 million of sales out of this one building on a lease. Let's scroll down and find out what this lease is.

This lease is 12,000. So your aggregate lease is 20. $6.5 a month. So on $320,000 of rent, you're doing $6.3 million of sales. Now, this is restaurant sales, so the margins probably aren't great, but it's not super low-priced restaurant sales either, and they're probably selling alcohol. So, I mean, I'm backing into this. Let's say your restaurant has 15% margins, your aggregate restaurant here, 6.3 million in sales, Maybe you're doing 900 of EBITDA. You know, let's say you've got 15 kind of margins kind of before rent and you're given then 300.

You're probably at 600K of EBITDA here between the aggregate restaurants. And they're asking for 1.2 plus 1.1. They're asking for 2.4. What's interesting, Bill, is this Sean Joyce, who has this listing. They don't really pop up if you search them. But then I searched her phone number, his or her phone number. and it's a restaurant-specific broker. It's called Northeast Restaurant Advisors,

and they're based out of Rye, New Hampshire. Interesting. That's strange. Yeah, that they end up, you know, getting somebody very, very far off the beaten path. But it looks like Sean is a guy. I'm sorry, Sean. He has 30 years of restaurant industry experience.

okay so broker probably knows what they're doing at least a little bit yeah I'm trying to see if I can find now plums for sale yeah yeah but at the very least it's hearth and saltus and they're in the same building so there's got to be I think it's a little bit weird that they're listed separately like there's no way you you're buying one of these right you're buying both yeah yeah they go together they probably share a kitchen they probably share a staff like I just I think it's a little wacky here that Sean has tried to sell them separately but if you look at them together, what you have is a pretty cool setup here.

You've got a whole building in the tourist core of downtown Beaufort. You've got two concepts that have been around for a long time and are working. One kind of high end, one kind of lower end. And it probably is profitable. I mean, it ought to be on 6.3 million of sales in a building that only costs them 300 grand a year.

There's a lot of room in there. Yeah. It's interesting because I'm wondering if this is a situation where like something happened with the owner. Lance Price is the owner. It looks like he's about 60 years old because this kind of broker advisor from Northeast Restaurant Advisor, Sean, the services offered on their website is like interim president and CFO, board of director appointment, reviewing organizational structure, helping with executive level and mid-level management recruitment, examine existing leases and contracts and renegotiate better terms.

It seems like I wonder if this is like a fixer that they brought in. And that's how Sean ended up kind of getting the listings. Like if they're, maybe they didn't set out initially to sell, you know, and there's some kind of story behind this where they brought in somebody who was kind of an industry expert. And then that person said, hey, look, you know, I'll help you kind of write the ship. But then I'm also now in a poll position to kind of help you divest. That's very possible.

What's interesting, Mills, and I glad you gave me the idea to kind of creep on LinkedIn. There are a number of people on LinkedIn that seem to work. for Plums, Inc., which is Salted River Grill, Plums, and Harthwood-Fired Pizza. But they have titles like Director of Catering Sales and Marketing, Director of Operations, Vice President. So what this telegraphs to me is a pretty built-out management team under the hood, which is a very positive sign. So, I mean, you have a restaurant group here that, as a great location in downtown, has a built-out operations team that's been around since 2003. Right, has a good brand. You know, if you're talking about buying a restaurant,

and these are a lot of the things that are on your checklist. Buying a business might be the biggest financial decision of your life, and most people try to make it alone. Cold emailing brokers, reading financials at midnight, and guessing what are the numbers actually hold up. Acquisition Lab exists so you don't have to. It's the leading community, platform, and fund backing serious, vetted acquisitions entrepreneurs

with a standing board of advisors who've actually done this. People who will talk you out of a bad deal as fast as into a good one. The education and the deal search tools are free and open to everyone before anyone asks you for a dime. The easiest way to feel that is a roundtable. It's a free live conversation where you talk through what you're actually stuck on with other buyers and advisors who've been exactly there. Nothing recorded so it always stays in the room. Sit in on the next one for free at acquisition lab.com slash roundtables and tell them that Acquisitions Anonymous sent you. it's interesting because i think like to to own a business like this you've got to be so

ingratiated into the community um that you're kind of synonymous with the restaurant and you have to be a local i mean the lance price the owner here i mean they're written up in a ton of different you know local publications they're featured on like visit Buford S.C.'s, Instagram. Like, there's a lot that goes into owning a business in a small seasonal town like this. And this is a seasonal small town that thankfully we have, you know, pretty good weather in South Carolina, except just when it's blazingly hot. This is not like, you know, you can only visit this place one or two months out of the year.

And there is a lot of net population growth here. So especially in Hilton Head, not that far away, you've got a lot of retirees kind of, you know, uprooting their lives in another part of the country and then kind of putting down roots there. So I'd be curious about their monthly revenue. You could look in, you know, 60 seconds at the monthly revenue across both of these restaurants and figure out seasonality and if you get hosed, you know, in the down months. Yeah. Well, so that's that's the challenge, right?

because the whole challenge is the staff. You know, what do you do with the staff in the down months? Obviously, like, the rent keeps going, but the rent is a relatively small fraction. You're 5% of revenue on rent for this restaurant group here of the two restaurants. But it's the staff. Like, yeah, you can cut them, but then where do they go? Like, can you get them back? So it's booting them back up.

And are you, can you get the same people? Are you retraining fresh people? And just makes it so much harder to run a seasonal business because of the de-staffing and the restaffing. Yeah. But that being said, obviously this restaurant group has been around since early 2000s. Like they've figured that out. That's what I like about this is it's been around for 20 plus years.

They've renewed their lease a couple times, probably, right? They've got people with the title vice president of operations. You know, the owner, like, yeah, you've probably got to be local, but you're probably not in these restaurants every night, which you can't say for a lot of restaurants. Yeah, yeah. It is interesting. It looks like the owner also owned and maybe sold or closed a, and then subsequently it closed a coffee shop next to Plums. So, like, this is a serial entrepreneur in a town that, you know, there's a lot of overlapping customer base. Like, you're literally walking from, you know, the coffee shop to the lunch place, to the pizza place, to the fine dining place, all in the same stretch.

it seems like that could really work to your advantage, but it's also a massive risk. Like if people just think you're an a hole, you know, when you come in and run this thing, all the sudden, like, all the businesses get, you know, on the blacklist. Yes, there's definitely the kind of the key man risk here. Let's talk a little bit about growth because they keep saying about, you know, here's how you would grow it. You start doing wine dinners, you know, et cetera. The challenge for me is like so goes,

you for it, so goes your business. You know, like, there are so many tourists each year, and you capture a certain percentage of the dining nights. And, like, you're already, like, I know these restaurants. They're already executing pretty well. So, like, I just don't see much growth here. I mean, now, I'm not a restaurateur, but, like, you could maybe execute a little better. You could start doing these wine dinners.

Like, but that's going to give you an extra couple points of growth, right? Like, there's just no way to triple this business, even double this business, right? So, like, this has got to, you got to make your money on the buy. You got to set it up for long-term ownership. And you've got to say, hey, this, I can math this out to a 20, 25% IRA. And I got to also think more about cash on cash because I have functionally no expectation of terminal value here. Yeah.

Which tells you, right, you've got to, you know, okay, you got to price in. then little to no growth because this owner has already figured out, hey, coffee doesn't work, pizza does, you know, fast casual does, fine dining does. Like they've already kind of optimized everything, probably way better than you or I could. And then you've got to say, okay, so not only are we not going to grow this thing materially top line, but we're going to have to really, really fight to maintain our market share because other restaurants are going to close and reopen and that's going to be all the buzz, you know, and the locals are going to want to go there.

And you're going to have to fight just to maintain, not fight to grow. So I think you've got to underwrite around declining growth over the long term at the very least. Yeah. Or at least flat. I mean, as you said, I think Beaufort is growing. So one of my big points of diligence would be some data on population trends in Beaufort, like what's driving that, et cetera. The challenge with Beaufort is there's just not a ton of industry there. It's a vacation town.

But it kind of runs on tourism. It runs on restaurants like these, which is good and bad. You know, you are core to the economic engine of the town. But if the town, I mean, these businesses, they survive COVID though. I mean, which shocks me. I mean, these businesses were probably cooked during COVID. I feel like the tricky thing about a business like this in particular is that you and the landlord have to be totally ingratiated to each other. And neither one of you can have zero some thinking.

which is really hard to find. If the owner, if the landlord and the building owner has zero some thinking, then they're just going to think, well, you're totally replaceable and you're going to feel that at least renewal, you know, pay what I want or I'll find somebody else. I think very judicious and like, you know, long, long term focus landlord is going to say, I've got a bird in the hand. I, you know, I should just, you know, have a modest renewal, not an overly aggressive one and keep the building occupied with no tenant improvement allowance, no vacancy, you know,

no minimize the risk. But you don't really know until you get further into the conversation about how this landlord and two different landlords really are going to function. Yeah. I do think these restaurants are transferable. I really do. Yeah. I mean, they've been around for a long time. They're professionally run. I'm just backing into it, right? If they've got 6.3 million sales, let's say you run at a 10% net. margin after rent and everything, you know, there's $650,000 here of SDE. And they're asking for a, you know, 1.1, you know, 3 million. Like, it's not worth quite that, but it's not like way off. And, you know, there's probably a risk sharing. We get the least dialed in. There is a way to do a

baton handoff here over a year or two and make this work. Yeah. And it doesn't seem like it's a celebrity driven. Like I was just in Savannah and, you know, Paula Dean, celebrity chef has this like 30 year old business called the lady and sons or something along those lines. And we walked by and it was completely shut down. Like it shut down in 2025. It's one of those things. She's like almost 80 years old.

I think she's just like, I don't want to do it anymore. That's not a transferable business because people go in there because it's associated with, you know, a celebrity. I don't think that, you know, in this case, the owner is a celebrity in a way that makes it impossible to transfer. Not at all. I don't think this depends on the owner at all. So as far as kind of deal structure here, we don't know what the EBITDAI is, just kind of backing into it. Let's say that if the EBITDAI is 900K, right, after the lease and everything, and assuming you've got that rate locked in for 10 years and maybe an option, et cetera, is it worth two and a half three times? Like, yeah. So like, yeah, $2.7 million, you know, then that's actually that's what they're asking, 1.1 plus 1.2. They're asking 2.3. Yeah. So like there is, assuming there's not something wrong here that we can't see, like this I think is a reasonable seller, you know, with reasonable price

expectations, with a business that is relatively well operated and transferable in a town that, you know, you kind of, what you see is what you get. This is a tourist town in South Carolina. Yep. I think the one big question would be, okay, there seems to be based on LinkedIn, a layer of middle management. Does the middle management come with the sale? Or is that overhead structure kind of removed from the financials, you know, and is now they're selling two restaurants, maybe not three. We're not really sure about like all those different moving parts.

If somehow the expense structure is not fully transparent or fully transferable, then you've got other issues to figure out. I can't come by two of these restaurants and lose, you know, half the team that has been helping run them for all these years. Totally. Like, it's kind of an all or nothing deal, I think. And if this seller is wanting to keep some of the entities, some of the IP, some of the team,

you're like, what in the world? Like, now I'm eroding, you know, the critical mass here. Yeah, like they can't keep plums, which is one block away and sell you these two because the teams are too integrated. You know, and there's no way. way to be like, oh, now you work at hearth pizza and saltus and you work at plums. No, they all know each other. And when the plums guy needs staffing, he's going to poach your people. Like, it's just totally. It's not going to work. I have this instance, one time, Bill, when I think about all or nothing,

it can be a huge advantage to a seller. They've already at least contemplated selling both of these. They've got to be thinking there's possibly a buyer to buy both. But as a buyer, it's amazing how Sometimes if you solve for the question that the seller isn't asking, you can like really fast forward yourself in the process. I tried to buy this little apartment complex like 10 years ago, called the owner's site unseen, said, hey, you know, I noticed I own something right around the corner and basically your neighbor. I noticed that there's always a ton of cars there. If you ever have any interest in selling, I would love for you to keep me in mind. And it was this really nice older lady. And she was like, no, I don't really want to sell.

Like, you know, I own a bunch of stuff. And if I sell this, then it's kind of like one less thing for me to like spread my overhead out across. And I was like, okay, no problem. And then I hung up and I was like, that was the worst sales pitch ever. And so I called her back. And I was like, Ms. Holly, I don't know what you have or what you don't have. But would you be interested in selling everything? Because she seemed older.

And she was like, well, let me talk to my husband and see. And I didn't know what she had or not. And I was like, okay, I'm never going to hear from her again. And she called me back the next day and was like, I talked to my husband. and I would like to talk to you about selling everything. She had like 140 units. I called her about eight. And she was like, I have 140.

But it was like impossible to get information. Like what do you own? How many units? What's your gross rents? She had it like, you know, like handwritten on these like legal pads and stuff. But I had a friend who ended up buying it eight years later and paid three times more than what I thought it was worth. But you never know, right? sometimes you've got to kind of go all in and say, hey, let me take all this off your plate because it's better for me and better for you.

Them keeping one restaurant or them keeping part of a portfolio can sometimes drag in a lot of ways. Yeah. Interesting. So that's the thing with plums here that you got to have all of it. Yeah. All right. So how about you? Thumbs up, thumbs down.

Oh, I'm fascinated by this. If it were like an hour away instead of like two and a half hours away and I could get down there faster, it would probably be more intriguing. I don't know. I've never, I still have not ever invested in a restaurant. And I just always think about that adage. Like, the best way to, you know, end up a millionaire in the restaurant business is to start with $2 million. You know, you end up in the million kind of thing. So it just scares me. I think you've got to be much more hands on. It's not like my family goes to Bufre, you know, once a month and I could be present. Now, you've got to be around there and want to be present. But if you are present, and by the way, it's beautiful place. It's, it's, it's, it's. Oh, it's amazing. In South Carolina, but like if that's what you want to do, maybe you're perishing it out of a corporate career at 50 and you want sort of like a second career for the next 10, 20 years. Which is what a lot of that demographic. I mean, that population in that market is that. Yes. So this is cool.

Like this is way better than most restaurants that we see for sale. Yes, absolutely. I will know when it changes hands, I think, because they'll probably be down there and I'll probably see a sign in the window or something. Very cool. This is why I love this. That's a good one. Real water. All right.

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