Coffee Shop Feasibility Study in Nevada

A franchise-heavy, Las Vegas-centered market

Nevada's coffee shop and snack bar record runs to 79 loans from FY2017 to FY2026, with $34.2 million approved. Nationally Nevada stands 28 of 53, and coffee shop stands 10 of 39 among Nevada's financed classes, which is a high position for a quick-service niche. The location quotient is 0.91x, close to the national share. What separates Nevada is the loan size: the median of $330,500 is 1.38x the national median for the class, so Nevada coffee operators borrow noticeably more than their peers elsewhere. Half of the loans fall between $125,800 and $497,100.

Franchise share, program mix and lenders

The franchise share is 49.4%, among the highest shares a lender will see, so about half of these files arrive with a brand's operating model and a franchise disclosure behind them. The mix is 76 SBA 7(a) loans and just 3 SBA 504 loans; coffee shops mostly lease, and 504 financing needs owned real estate. Zions Bancorporation, National Association shows 8 loans and $4.1 million, America First Federal Credit Union 6 loans and $5.6 million, Wells Fargo Bank National Association 6 loans and $1.7 million, U.S. Bank, National Association 6 loans and $592,400, and First Bank of the Lake 5 loans and $3.4 million. The dollar spread is wide. U.S. Bank's 6 loans total $592,400 while America First's 6 total $5.6 million, which points to very different borrower types across the same count.

Nevada's cancellation floor is 9.6% for the FY2017 to FY2024 cohort, while a ceiling that adds loans still undisbursed reaches 11.5%. A borrower should expect that a small share of approvals dies between approval and funding, often over a lease or a build-out timeline. Nevada's coffee charge-off rate stays unpublished here, since the seasoned cohort holds under 30 loans. We give no figure, and readers should not infer zero.

What a Nevada study must test

Clark County holds 60 of the 79 loans in the file, with Washoe at 13, so a study is really testing either the Las Vegas valley or the Reno area, and the two behave differently. Demand work should separate resident traffic from visitor traffic and from the corridor traffic that supports drive-through formats. Cost should reflect the loan size premium noted above, since a build-out with a drive lane costs far more than an in-line suite. Debt service coverage has to survive a slow ramp; the yearly record shows 17 loans and $5.2 million in FY2026 against 5 loans and $1.6 million in FY2017, so more operators are entering and competing. For a leased Nevada site the appraisal rests on lease terms, so the study should read the rent and term as carefully as the sales forecast.