SBA 504 Restaurant Feasibility Study in Missouri

Full-service restaurants are the top-ranked asset class in Missouri's 504 record, at 1 of 39, yet the state is only 23rd by loan count for the class. That gap is the cell's signature: restaurants lead a modest local table. Together the 51 loans come to $31.3 million across FY2017 to FY2026, and their median is $532,000, which is 0.88x the nationwide 504 restaurant median; half of the loans lie from $277,500 to $752,000. Franchise share is 11.8%, so most of these are independent dining rooms.

A table with essentially one lender

Rural Missouri, Inc. is shown with 32 loans and $17.9 million, with the St. Charles County council at 6 loans and $2.3 million. One name covers most of the book, a pattern that tells a borrower which desk will probably read the file. The tallies are from SBA's holder records and carry no opinion of the lenders. Counties spread widely: Saint Louis has 6 loans, Greene 5, Camden and Taney 4, and Cape Girardeau, Clay, Jackson and Platte 3 each. Camden and Taney suggest resort-area dining shows up in the data.

Timing and unfinished projects

Yearly counts ran 5, 4 and 7 from FY2017 to FY2019, 4 in FY2020, 6, then a high of 9 in FY2022, and 4, 3, 5 and 4 in the four years after. Cancellation was at least 9.5% of approvals through FY2024 and could be as high as 16.7% once approvals still awaiting disbursement are also treated as cancelled. The distance between the two is notable, because it means a meaningful share of approvals had not yet disbursed.

The withheld loss rate

SBA's records give too few funded loans for the charged-off rate to be shown, so no figure is printed. A reader should neither fill in a number nor treat the blank as a clean slate.

What to test before a Missouri restaurant borrows

The point of 504 is owning the building, so the study should place a value on the building as a dining room and on its alternative uses, since a failed dining room is a hard space to re-let. It needs a menu and seating plan matched to a defined trade area, a sales-per-seat estimate against competing rooms, labour and food cost, and a coverage test that survives a slow first year. Seasonality matters in the resort counties. Check also the liquor licence path and the construction schedule, since each can move the opening date.