Who do you represent?
Jason Taken represents grocery sellers and qualified buyers through HedgeStone Business Advisors.
Independent grocery is a thin-margin, high-velocity trade. FMI reports $1 trillion in 2025 supermarket sales and 45,575 U.S. supermarkets in 2024. Those are channel facts. They do not tell you what a 12,000-square-foot independent in a strip center is worth, or whether a first-time buyer can fund the inventory. This site exists to teach that file-level reading — then to book a confidential intro with Jason Taken when you want a person on the other side of the table.
Grocery Store Business Broker is the nationwide grocery practice of HedgeStone Business Advisors. The work is sell-side packaging and buyer-side underwriting for stores that look like grocery: full-line independents, neighborhood boxes, ethnic markets, rural stores, grocery-with-c-store hybrids, and stores that own the dirt. Census NAICS 445110 is the supermarket and grocery-except-convenience definition. Convenience-only boxes still show up here when the grocery room is real enough that SNAP, produce, and a wholesaler book matter.
If you own the store, the useful question is what a financed buyer will pay after a recast, a cost count, and the license calendar. If you want to buy one, the useful question is whether weekly sales, shrink, rent, SNAP mix, and the lease will support the note. Both questions have the same spine: SDE, inventory at cost, and agencies that do not move on your closing date.
How a grocery file is actually priced
Going-concern value is recast seller’s discretionary earnings times a negotiated multiple, plus sellable inventory counted at cost. Owned real estate is a second asset. You recast the store as if it paid market rent, then you cap or appraise the building. Do not bury a below-market related-party lease inside a trophy multiple.
Teaching example, labeled illustrative: weekly sales $125,000 annualize to $6,500,000. Recast SDE at 4.2 percent is $273,000. Inventory at 16 turns is about $406,000. A 2.0×–2.9× band on SDE is $546,000–$791,700. Add inventory and the going-concern band is about $952,000–$1,197,700. Cut the multiple if the lease has 18 months left, if SNAP is half of sales and the buyer has never held a permit, or if the store only works with the seller in the meat case 70 hours a week.
BizBuySell published a 3.38 average earnings multiple on grocery and supermarket businesses sold in 2025, a 2.66 five-year average for 2021–2025, and a 1.60–3.15 interquartile range on that sold sample. The 2025 average revenue multiple on the same sample is 0.43. Those are national listing-site sold figures. They are not a Chicago multiple, not a Hispanic-market multiple, and not a chain-M&A print. FMI’s 2.1 percent average net profit for food retailers in 2025 is a food-retailer net sample, not a valuation multiple. FMI’s $668,377 average weekly sales per supermarket and $19.59 weekly sales per selling square foot in 2025 describe the Speaks supermarket channel. Your box is underwritten on its own scan data.
Print the SDE worksheet. Change the inputs in the valuation calculator. Then read the valuation hub if you want the add-back argument in one place.
What sellers are deciding
Most independents close as asset sales. You are selling the going concern, the equipment, and the stockroom. You are not usually selling the legal entity, the seller’s SNAP permit, or a promise that alcohol moves on Tuesday. USDA FNS is blunt: SNAP authorization does not transfer; the new owner files a new application. Alcohol is a class, a quota, or a control-state product — NABCA lists 17 control states, plus local-control pockets. Selling the building always requires a real-estate licensee in that state.
The default process on this site is confidential: blind teaser, NDA, qualified operators. A vestibule sign tells employees, vendors, and the landlord before you have a buyer. Read how to sell confidentially and the seller hub. Download the seller playbook and mark the recast page before you book.
Sellers have more options than “list it.” A sale to a manager or a family member still needs a real price and a real note — soft language creates hard lawsuits. A sale-leaseback can pull cash out of owned dirt while the store keeps operating. Waiting two years to clean unreported cash, fix the lease, and document shrink is sometimes the honest advice. Distressed boxes still have inventory and a lease; price those, not a turnaround novel. Start at selling a distressed store if that is the file.
What buyers are deciding
A financed buyer has to prove sales, survive shrink, live with the lease, re-apply for SNAP, and clear alcohol on that agency’s timeline. Photos of produce do not pay the note. Start at the buyer hub and how to buy step by step.
Capital is a stack, not a personality. SBA 7(a) is the published primary change-of-ownership program with a $5 million maximum. Inventory treatment, standby seller notes, and equity injection are deal-specific. Conventional and credit-union paper shows up when the box and the borrower are boring in a good way. Seller carry often sits on standby behind the senior loan — read the standby, not the folklore. Use the cash-to-close estimator and the SBA DSCR calculator before you ask for a CIM.
Teaching cash-to-close, labeled illustrative: a $1,050,000 going-concern (ex-inventory) at 15 percent equity is $157,500. Inventory at cost of $180,000 is usually cash or a short-term piece. Add $75,000 working capital and $30,000 for closing plus SNAP downtime. You are a roughly $442,500 buyer, not a $157,500 buyer. Say the real number on the call.
Walking away is an option. A food-desert story without a lease and without sales proof is a donation. Read buying in a food desert before you romanticize an empty trade area.
Formats this practice actually works
An independent supermarket lives on wholesaler terms, shrink, and labor — AWG, C&S, UNFI, SpartanNash, regional co-ops, plus DSD. A neighborhood grocery is a smaller box with a tighter labor graph and a lease that can eat the mid-single digits of sales. Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern / halal, kosher, and Caribbean / African markets underwrite language on the floor, specialty wholesalers, and a customer mix you cannot fake with a circular. Rural boxes can be a good living and a difficult loan. Gas-station grocery and convenience-with-grocery files mix fuel or lottery with a grocery room that still has SNAP and a count night. Natural / organic and specialty stores live on different turns and different shrink. A food co-op is a governance problem as much as a P&L. Grocery with real estate is two prices.
Buyers use the twin pages under /buy-a-…. Do not apply FMI’s weekly-sales-per-store dollars to any of those formats without that store’s scan data.
Licenses, tax, and the Tuesday that slips
SNAP, retail food, alcohol, WIC, lottery, and tobacco each have their own clock. Write the conditions into the LOI. Print the closing and license checklist. State pages exist because sales tax on food, bulk-sale or tax-clearance practice, minimum wage, and alcohol regimes differ. Start at sell a grocery store in Texas or buy a grocery store in California and move from there. Metro pages — Chicago, Los Angeles, New York — are trade-area teaching, not a listings board.
Jason Taken is not listing a brokerage license for every state on this homepage. Check the rule that applies to your deal. Selling the building always requires a real-estate licensee in that state.
How to use this site, then book
| Need | Read | Mark |
|---|---|---|
| Price language | Valuation | SDE worksheet |
| Exit | Sell a grocery store | Seller playbook |
| Acquire | Buy a grocery store | Buyer workbook |
| Sequence | How a sale works | License checklist |
Words live in the glossary. Process questions live in the FAQ. If you want the practice story first, read About and Grocery Store Business Broker. Downloads sit on the downloads page.
Who this practice is for — and who it is not
This practice is for owners who want a confidential exit and for buyers who can fund a grocery file. It is not a listings board. It is not a franchise sales office. It is not a promise that every 8,000-square-foot box is a career. Some stores should be recast, cleaned, and sold in two years. Some should be walked. Saying that on a first call is part of the job.
Jason Taken writes these pages. Email appears as text on About: jason.taken@hedgestone.com. The intake is a booked intro on the calendar page. Jason Taken is not listing a brokerage license for every state here. If you sell the building, you need a real-estate licensee in that state. State broker-licensing summaries live on state-by-state business broker licensing — those lists conflict across public summaries, so the sentence on each state page stays cautious.
If you want resources in one index, use Resources. If you want every defined term, use the glossary. Tools — valuation, cash to close, rent checker, break-even — are calculators, not quotes.
What the intro call is actually for
The hour is not a pitch deck. It is a file read. Sellers: last week’s sales, a lease page, and an honest list of holes. Buyers: proof of funds, the format you can staff, and the states you will move to. Jason Taken will recast in the same order every time — sales you can prove, SDE a lender will believe, inventory at cost, then license clocks. The illustrative bands on this page move when your numbers land.
If you want process before math, read how a grocery sale works and how brokers get paid. If you want capital before a tour, read how much money you need. If you want the ugly list, read common reasons grocery sales fall apart.
Census monthly retail sales for NAICS 44511 (FRED MRTSSM44511USN) show the national grocery channel — $72,706 million in June 2026, not seasonally adjusted. That series is useful for “is grocery still a real industry.” It is useless for pricing a 9,000-square-foot independent. Same warning for the 45,575-store FMI count: it is a channel census of supermarket formats, not your competitive set on a given corner.
Investors who want a portfolio instead of one box still underwrite store by store. Shared recast, shared license calendar, shared labor graph. A roll-up story that skips those three is a slide. Start at selling multiple locations or the grocery M&A landscape if that is the conversation — then come back to one P&L.
Minimum wage and food-tax rules change the labor graph and the register. They do not change the method. See state minimum wage and state grocery sales tax. Then come back to the recast.
When the worksheet has more blanks than numbers, book a confidential intro. Bring last week’s sales, a lease page, and an honest list of what you do not have. That is enough to start.
Worked math for grocery-specialist broker for sellers and buyers
These figures are a teaching walk-through for grocery-specialist broker for sellers and buyers, not a quote and not a sold comp. Order of operations: weekly sales, recast SDE, inventory at cost, then a multiple band.
| Input or output | Illustrative figure |
|---|---|
| Weekly sales (illustrative) | $195,000 |
| Annual sales | $10,140,000 |
| Recast SDE | $365,040 (3.6% of sales) |
| Inventory at cost | $724,286 (~14 turns) |
| Occupancy check | $365,040 / year (3.6% of sales) |
| Low going-concern | $1,509,122 at 2.15x SDE + inventory |
| High going-concern | $1,764,650 at 2.85x SDE + inventory |
| Sketch DSCR on a note | 1.49 |
Inventory is cash at close, not a multiple. Confusing the two is how sellers over-ask and buyers under-cash the wire.
Book the intro call with your side of the table ready: seller files or buyer capital. The calendar is the only next step.