Quick Service Restaurant Feasibility Study in the Tulsa, OK Metro Area

Tulsa: second in class, over half franchised

Over FY2017 to FY2026, SBA approved 48 limited-service restaurant loans in Tulsa, worth $15.5 million in all. Tulsa is 72 of 779 among metropolitan and micropolitan areas for limited-service restaurant, and limited-service restaurant is 2 of 39 there. At 0.85x, the location quotient shows Tulsa lending less to limited-service restaurant, proportionally, than the country does. Project county: Tulsa County, OK, 42 loans.

A Tulsa loan at the midpoint is $242,000, and the middle half spans $129,000 to $483,875. Beside the country's median, Tulsa comes to 0.78x, a sign of lighter projects. Tulsa lacks a published 7(a) and 504 count, and blank is not zero. Franchise brands stand behind 56.3% of the Tulsa loans.

Two Oklahoma banks

BancFirst has the larger count of loans and the larger dollar total of the two named banks. The 7(a) names are BancFirst, 10 loans and $4.2 million and First Oklahoma Bank, 5 loans and $1.3 million. What follows for Tulsa is a ledger of holdings, not the habits of institutions.

Tulsa lost at least 15.0% of its FY2017 to FY2024 approvals to cancellation. No ceiling for undisbursed loans prints for Tulsa. Charge-offs in Tulsa are unmeasured here: the rate is withheld. FY2017 brought 11 loans worth $3.7 million, FY2019 brought 8 loans worth $2.8 million, and FY2024 brought 7 loans worth $1.4 million appear in the yearly record. For Tulsa, omitted years rest on thin counts. For Tulsa, membership follows project counties, and failed matches drop out.

Tulsa: what the study must test

With more than half of the loans franchised, the first document is the franchisor's: unit volumes in comparable markets, required build-out, royalty and advertising fees. Drive-through queue length and traffic counts decide whether projected sales are real, and a neighboring unit of the same brand may cut into a trade area. Labor per ticket is thin, and delivery-app fees reduce margin at the busiest hours. A cancellation floor of 15.0% means approvals often fail to close, so the sources and uses, the lease and the timeline to opening should be firm before application. Valuation of a single-tenant pad rests on land, lease history and the lender's reach to alternative users. A franchisor's own estimate of unit volume should not be accepted untested: the study should compare it with sales reported by nearby operators and with what the site's traffic can support.