Quick Service Restaurant Feasibility Study in the Salinas, CA Metro Area

Quick-service restaurants in the Salinas area

The Salinas, CA area ranks limited-service restaurants fourth of 39 among its classes, and nationally the area is 132 of 779. The Salinas approvals come to 25 loans and $14.3 million in the FY2017 to FY2026 window. A location quotient of 1.21x shows these restaurants a little heavier in Salinas lending than in lending nationally, and the median loan, $300,000, is 0.96x the class's median nationwide, essentially level with it. Salinas therefore looks like a market of ordinary-sized restaurant loans where the class is somewhat more common than average.

Range, brands and the one holder

A tight band, $200,000 to $405,000, holds the middle half of loans. A franchise brand is attached to 32.0%. Monterey County, CA holds all 25. Monterey County Bank alone prints as a holder, with 8 SBA 7(a) loans and $3.3 million. The program split is not printed.

FY2018 reads 5 loans and $1.3 million, and FY2019 reads 6 loans and $3.0 million. FY2025 reads 0 loans and $0: limited-service restaurants saw no approval in that year. The rest are not listed for want of enough loans. Rates for cancellations and charge-offs do not appear, since Loan Analytics will not compute them on fewer than 30 loans.

What a Salinas quick-service study has to test

The brand share is moderate, so a sponsor may be either a franchisee or an independent, and the study must say which. It has to prove the site: how much traffic passes at the hours the format needs, how cars enter and leave, and how many competitors share the approach. Put the outlay for a new build or leasehold work beside a median loan of $300,000, franchise fees and equipment requirements should sit in the cash flow, and the debt payment should be shown as covered when sales run under plan. The area is made of counties, on the July 2023 list, matched to financed sites.

Only one lender is printed, so most of the holder picture is missing from this page; a borrower who wants to know who holds comparable loans locally has to ask the lender directly. County counts show all 25 loans in one county, so there is no spread to analyse across the area. A sponsor should treat the figures as the outer frame of the market and fill in the detail through the site search, comparable units and the franchisor's own disclosures.