Coffee Shop Feasibility Study in Oklahoma

Where Oklahoma sits against the national coffee book

Coffee shop and snack bar lending in Oklahoma runs a little richer than the national pattern. The FY2017 to FY2026 file counts 81 Oklahoma approvals in this class and $32.6 million of gross approvals, a volume that puts the state at 27 of 53 for coffee shop and snack bar loans. Inside Oklahoma the class sits at 8 of 39 among asset types, and the 1.15x location quotient means these shops take a slightly larger slice of SBA approvals than they do nationally. The median loan of $270,000 is 1.13x the national median for the class. None of these ratios is extreme, and outcome measures give no separate signal against Oklahoma overall or against the class, so the useful reading is that Oklahoma behaves like a somewhat larger-ticket version of the national coffee market.

Franchise weight and the lender mix

The most visible feature of the cell is franchising: 44.4% of the loans went to franchised units, so lender underwriting here often rests on a brand's unit economics as much as on the individual borrower. The middle half of approvals runs from $113,000 to $478,500. SBA 7(a) carried 71 loans and SBA 504 carried 10. BancFirst leads the 7(a) lenders with 14 loans worth $5.0 million, and Arvest Bank follows with 7 loans worth $752,600, a much smaller average ticket. Rural Enterprises of Oklahoma, Inc. is the 504 sponsor in view, with 6 loans and $3.5 million. Tulsa County accounts for 27 loans and Oklahoma County for 22, with Canadian County at 6 and Payne County at 4. Volume was uneven: only 3 loans in FY2019, then 14 in FY2022 and 13 in FY2023, while FY2025 produced 7 loans worth $7.1 million, a sharp rise in average size.

Cancellation took out 10.9% or more of the approvals made during FY2017 to FY2024, with a ceiling of 14.1% once every still-undisbursed Oklahoma loan is treated as dead. Oklahoma's charge-off rate is not published here, because the early cohort of funded loans fell short of 30. That is not a statement of zero losses, and a lender should not read it as one; the record is simply too thin to publish a rate that means anything. Borrowers and lenders should lean on the national class figures and on the franchisor's own unit performance for loss expectations.

What the study must test

Any Oklahoma coffee shop study should start with traffic: drive-through access, morning commuter counts and nearby competing brands matter more than the size of the metro. If the project is franchised, the study must reconcile the franchisor's disclosed sales with local conditions in Tulsa, Oklahoma City or a smaller market, rather than accept national averages. Build-out and equipment costs should be set against a typical SBA ticket near $270,000, and debt service coverage should be modeled with a slow ramp in the first months. A cancellation floor of 10.9% is a reminder that many approved projects stall before funding, often over site control or lease terms. The appraisal will lean on the lease and the sales record, so the study should document both.