Restaurant Feasibility Study in the Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO Metro Area

Denver restaurants in SBA files

Denver's metro record holds 403 loans to table-service restaurants, FY2017 to FY2026, for $255.6 million. Nationally it is 16 of 821 for the class, and restaurants are 2 of 39 inside Denver's mix. A location quotient of 0.86x sits under the national share, so restaurants carry slightly less weight here than nationally. The leading counties are Denver with 138 loans, Arapahoe with 99, Jefferson with 59, Douglas with 55 and Adams with 29, then Broomfield with 10 and Clear Creek with 7.

Denver loans lean large for the class: a $350,000 median is 1.27x the national class median, with quartiles at $150,000 and $810,000. The franchise share is 10.4%, with 368 loans under 7(a) and 35 under 504. A study should be explicit about whether it is financing equipment and working capital or a property purchase.

Lenders active in the area

Among banks The Huntington National Bank has 45 loans and $12.4 million, KeyBank National Association 31 and $14.9 million, U.S. Bank, National Association 24 and $4.3 million, JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association 21 and $6.3 million, and Newtek Bank, National Association 17 and $13.7 million. The 504 holders are B:Side Capital with 16 loans at $14.7 million and Mountain West Small Business Finance with 13 at $11.8 million.

Everything in the lender paragraph is drawn from SBA files on loans a lender holds or held. It shows where Denver lending happened, and a borrower should not infer that a listed institution will lend on a given project or on given terms. Lender history is context for a study, not a substitute for the underwriting that a lender performs on its own.

Cancellations, charge-offs, and what to test

Cancelled approvals set a floor of 14.7%; The ceiling that counts undisbursed loans is held back by Loan Analytics. Charge-off so far is at least 5.0% on a cohort of 159 loans, while Loan Analytics also withholds the five-year rate, and neither withheld figure is read as zero. These are floors, so actual experience could be worse.

A feasibility study for a restaurant in Denver's metro area has to test demand in the specific submarket, the competitive set along the corridor, labor and occupancy cost against sales, plus the Denver coverage ratio when the loan is near $350,000. A loan whose county the July 2023 delineation does not place in the metro is left out, so the true count may be a little higher than 403.