Liquor Store Feasibility Study in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX Metro Area

Liquor stores around Austin: all 7(a), no 504

Every one of the 31 liquor store loans in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX Metro Area is a 7(a) loan, and the 504 count is 0. That is the clearest feature of this cell. The class stands 14 of 39 on the local list and 30 of 426 on the national metro and micro list, while a 0.56x location quotient places liquor stores below their weight in the nation's lending. The median loan of $350,000 is 0.78x the nationwide median. Together the 31 approvals of FY2017 to FY2026 total $12.6 million.

Distribution, counties and years

The middle half of loans covers $215,800 to $619,000. Travis County has 18 loans. Printed years: FY2020 and FY2021, each with no approvals ($0); FY2022, 5 loans and $2.5 million; FY2024, 5 loans and $1.8 million. All others are hidden. In SBA's holder data The Huntington National Bank is entered for 5 loans worth $1.8 million, a figure about loans held, not origination.

Blank fields

Travis County's liquor stores come with three blanks: franchise share, cancellations and charge-offs. A thin FY2017 to FY2021 group keeps them off the page, and a hidden floor is neither good news nor a zero.

Two empty years, FY2020 and FY2021, are followed by a year with 5 loans. A borrower should read that as a market where approvals can arrive in bunches, and a lender should expect that a single store request is judged on its own papers and not on a steady local flow. Nothing on this page says why the quiet years occurred.

What an Austin liquor store study should test

With the whole book in 7(a), financing a store tends to mean working capital, inventory, fixtures and a leasehold, not a purchased building, so the study should itemize the first stock order apart from build-out. Confirm that the permit can be obtained or moved to the site, since it gates opening, and test whether traffic and the distance to similar stores can reach the sales planned. Margin by product category, shrinkage and staffing across opening hours belong in the model. A lender examines payment coverage on cautious sales and the stability of the permit. An appraiser will look to the business and its lease, because the building is usually rented.