SBA 7(a) Restaurant Feasibility Study in Wyoming

Restaurants are second of 39 among Wyoming's 7(a) classes, but the state is 52nd on loans counted, the lowest placement in this group, so a dominant local class sits inside a very small borrowing state. The 30 loans total $17.2 million. Wyoming's median of $145,500 is 0.59x the national 7(a) restaurant figure, and its interquartile band runs from $50,000 to $547,350. Franchised loans are 10.0%.

Counties

No lender appears for this cell, so none is named here. Crook and Fremont counties each have 6 loans, Sheridan 5, Natrona 3, Campbell and Teton 2, and Big Horn, Converse, Johnson and Laramie 1 each. Crook sharing the top place with Fremont shows that, in a cell this size, a handful of individual projects decides the county ranking.

The years

FY2017 had 2 loans, FY2018 1, FY2019 2, and FY2020 a single loan of $140,000. Then came a surge in FY2021 with 10 loans and $4.7 million, followed by 4 in FY2022 at $2.5 million. FY2023 and FY2024 had 1 each, and FY2025 and FY2026 4 each, the latter at $5.9 million. A year with 10 loans next to years with 1 shows how unevenly approvals arrive, so no single year should be read as a norm.

Rates withheld

Nothing is printed for cancellation or for charge-off, the cohorts being too short of loans. The absence of a figure is not evidence of a clean record, and a reader should not treat it as one.

What a Wyoming restaurant study must test

In a thin market, the study should test the customer base with care: residents, any seasonal visitors, and passing traffic. It should show seasonal sales by month, since a restaurant open only part of the year must carry costs in the off-season. Staffing is a constraint in small towns, as are supplier deliveries and distance from distributors. Where alcohol is served, the licence and who holds it need to be settled. Distance to suppliers and the cost of freight in a sparsely populated state also belong in the food-cost model. For the appraisal, the building should be valued as a restaurant and as other commercial space, and coverage should run with sales below plan.