Restaurant Feasibility Study in the Fort Wayne, IN Metro Area

Fort Wayne sits close to the national weight for restaurant lending. The location quotient is 0.97x, restaurants head the area's list of 39 classes and the area ranks 110 in a field of 821. FY2017 to FY2026 produced 44 approvals worth $25.6 million. A $293,250 median is 1.07x the nation's, and the central loans start at $147,500 and top out at $629,700, which places a typical Fort Wayne note a little above the national norm.

A franchise share in the teens and one named bank

Franchise units are 13.6% of loans. The Bippus State Bank is the only lender the file names, at 5 loans and $3.2 million. Loan Analytics withholds the program split.

What the file does not reveal

Only FY2017 (6 loans, $1.9 million), FY2018 (6 loans, $6.6 million), FY2023 (7 loans, $5.2 million) and FY2024 (5 loans, $1.5 million) can be read; FY2019 through FY2022, FY2025 and FY2026 are withheld by Loan Analytics. Cancellation and loss rates are withheld too, so there is no loss floor here, and hidden is not zero. This page prints no county rows either, so the study has to establish where in the metro the loans cluster.

Testing a Fort Wayne restaurant

Because the record sits near parity and the median is close to the national figure, a Fort Wayne restaurant is a typical SBA candidate, and the study should therefore be concrete about what makes the site good: visibility, access, parking and what already operates nearby. Trade-area counts of households, daytime workers and competing seats come first. Fit-out, equipment and working capital should be priced next to the $293,250 median. The cash model should open slowly and also run a weaker-sales case. The appraisal should split going-concern value from property value, and the metro placement follows the July 2023 delineation. The 44 loans total $25.6 million, a record large enough to give context but too thin to settle a site decision. A lender reading this record will weigh the operator's history above all, since neither a program split nor a loss floor is shown, and a sponsor with prior openings has the strongest case.