Restaurant Feasibility Study in the Urban Honolulu, HI Metro Area

Restaurants lead the Honolulu record

Restaurants top the list for Urban Honolulu, HI: the class stands at 1 of 39 among those SBA lists for the area, with 89 loans approved from FY2017 to FY2026 and $23.7 million in gross dollars. Among metro and micro areas the place ranks 58 of 821 for the class. A location quotient of 1.49x says restaurants hold a bigger share of local SBA lending than the national mix would suggest. All 89 loans sit in Honolulu County, so the area and the county describe the same ground. No metric here is marked as distinctive, so what follows is plain description.

Small loans, no franchise flags

A typical loan is $50,000, a mere 0.18x of the national median for restaurants. The middle half of loans lies between $37,000 and $150,000, a narrow and low band. The franchise share reads 0.00%, meaning SBA's files flag no restaurant here as a franchise unit. For a borrower this describes a record of small independent requests, so a lender weighing a larger project will find few like-sized loans in this area, and the study must justify the amount without leaning on local precedent. The counts for the two SBA programs are withheld, as is the cancellation floor. The charge-off rate is also withheld, because the FY2017 to FY2021 cohort is smaller than Loan Analytics will publish. A withheld value is unknown, never zero.

Who holds the loans

Each line below reflects what SBA reports about current or past holders, and it says nothing about how a lender picks its borrowers. Central Pacific Bank holds 52 of the 7(a) loans, $6.0 million in all. First Hawaiian Bank holds 10, at $738,000, and Hawaii National Bank holds 5, at $1.4 million. One institution accounts for most of the 7(a) record in this class, so a borrower will meet that name far more often than the others. Seeing a name here is no sign of what that institution would offer a new project.

Years that can be shown

Only three years clear the small-count rule: FY2017 with 18 loans and $4.7 million, FY2018 with 15 loans and $3.1 million, and FY2024 with 18 loans and $2.5 million. Every other year, FY2019 through FY2023 and FY2025 through FY2026, stays blank, either resting on fewer than 5 loans or allowing such a figure to be worked out. FY2026 counts as a finished fiscal year here, and its blank reflects a disclosure limit, not unfinished data. Three scattered years cannot support a trend, and none is claimed.

Testing a Honolulu restaurant

A restaurant project in this area needs a study that tests covers and average check against rent or ownership cost, the build-out budget, and debt service coverage at a guarded sales level. With ordinary loans this small, the appraisal and the equipment collateral will weigh more than any local lending history, and a request far above the middle half needs a clear reason. The study should also show how the concept differs from the many independent operators already in the record. Placement in the area follows the project county by name under the 2023 delineation, and a record from a county that cannot be matched there appears in no metro.