Restaurant Feasibility Study in the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metro Area

Restaurants lead the Twin Cities record

Full-service restaurants come first among the 39 classes SBA funded around Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, and the market sits 11 of 821 for this class nationally. The file counts 569 approvals and $280.8 million. Its location quotient is 0.90x, a shade under the national mix, so restaurants make up a slightly smaller share of local SBA lending than elsewhere even though they head the local table. The class heads the local table without being an oversized local specialty.

Tickets run a little above the national norm. The median is $300,000, or 1.09x the national class median, while $100,000 to $616,000 spans half of all loans. Of the 569 loans, 455 used SBA 7(a) and 114 used SBA 504, so a noticeable minority financed fixed assets. Franchise units account for only 8.1%, which tells us independents dominate and each project must justify its own concept, not a brand's track record.

Who lends and where

Sunrise Banks National Association tops the SBA 7(a) table with 72 loans and $27.0 million. U.S. Bank, National Association has 33, The Huntington National Bank 24, BankVista 22 and Choice Financial Group 19, the last with $13.2 million. In SBA 504 work, Midwest Business Finance Corporation holds 27 loans and $17.8 million, with WBD, Inc. and Central Minnesota Development Company at 11 each. Sunrise's 72 loans and every count beside it are SBA holder data, with no opinion of how a bank lends. Hennepin County, MN carries 252 loans, Ramsey County, MN 81, Anoka County, MN 47, Dakota County, MN 45 and Washington County, MN 41, while St. Croix County, WI adds 21 from across the state line.

Cancellations among FY2017 to FY2024 approvals run 10.3% at the floor and 12.0% when approvals still waiting to disburse are treated as dead. Of the 260 loans that disbursed over FY2017 to FY2021, 5.4% have been written off to date, and that is a floor. No five-year charge-off rate appears because Loan Analytics withholds it for this cohort. Approvals peaked at 72 loans in FY2017, bottomed at 39 loans and $24.3 million in FY2026, and sat at 66 in FY2024. Area membership rests on the project county in the 2023 delineation, and a loan whose county is unplaceable counts nowhere.

Testing a Twin Cities restaurant

A restaurant study here should separate Hennepin's dense urban trade from suburban counties such as Anoka and Dakota, where traffic and parking drive sales. Costs have to be priced against the $300,000 median, with attention to any ask near $616,000. Coverage depends on covers, average check and prime cost through a slow season, and the appraisal tests the leasehold or building. The 569 approvals above guarantee nothing for a new site.