Buying or selling a Memphis grocery store

Bring the beer-board address and the wine-privilege status to the first call. Then book a confidential intro with three years of P&Ls you can recast. A Shelby opt-in and a surrounding jurisdiction that never opted in are not the same wine asset, even when both teasers say Memphis. Grocery Store Business Broker — HedgeStone Business Advisors, led by Jason Taken — treats a Memphis grocery as a Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission file plus a local beer-board file. Statewide tax and agency rules live on the Tennessee seller page and buyer page. This essay is the river metro: wine that is not statewide, beer that is local, Shelby tax versus a Mississippi-border ticket, and the Parkway / east Memphis international independents.

FMI’s 2025 supermarket sample — $1 trillion in channel sales, $668,377 average weekly sales, $19.59 per square foot, and a 2.1 percent food-retailer net — describes the channel. It is not a Summer Avenue Saturday. The sourced national earnings band on this site is BizBuySell’s grocery sold cohort — 3.38× in 2025, 2.66× across five years, IQR 1.60–3.15, 0.43× revenue. Apply it to a Shelby recast after beer-board lag and wine-privilege risk, not as a Summer Avenue ask.

Wine-in-grocery is a jurisdiction question

Tennessee retail food stores may hold wine-in-grocery privileges in jurisdictions that opted in. Beer is locally licensed. Verify the county and the city. A beer-board hearing date is a close-calendar item, not a footnote. Ask who must appear, what the board wants from the incoming owner, and whether a pending violation stops the transfer. Tennessee is not a grocery-spirits state on the list this pack uses. Package stores and local beer boards are separate. Retail package-store quotas exist; confirm ABC. ABC plus the local beer board must approve. Neither is automatic with the asset sale.

A CIM that says “full liquor” on a Memphis grocery is usually a misread. Name the wine privilege, the beer permit, and whether a package store is a different legal entity. A beer permit that the board will not calendar is a hole in the check, not a talking point on the teaser. Write the next hearing date into the workplan before you pick a close. A board that meets monthly is a working-capital fact, not a courtesy. Put that hearing date next to landlord consent on the same workplan. Read state-by-state alcohol regime and liquor-license due diligence. The liquor versus no-liquor essay is the format fork.

Retail food sits with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture and local health. A new operator is a new permit, not a sticker. Put agriculture and health next to landlord consent. Lease assignment and lease due diligence are often the critical path. This pack does not publish a Memphis rent-per-foot. Occupancy is a ratio from the lease and the P&L. Use the rent checker.

If the seller owns the box, recast the store on market rent first. Buying a store with real estate keeps the stacks apart. A related-party rent is not SDE.

Shelby County tax versus a Mississippi-border box

Shelby County versus Mississippi-border stores are different tax regimes. Do not copy a Memphis city ticket onto a DeSoto-side file. Name the state in the LOI. Recast sales tax from the returns that match the address. A buyer who toured an east Memphis independent is not automatically underwriting a Southaven box.

Confirm Tennessee DOR tax clearance and successor liability on a Tennessee asset sale. UCC Article 6 bulk-transfer statutes have been repealed in most states; that is not “no successor risk.” Read bulk sales and tax clearance and taxes on selling. Hold escrow for the clearance.

Federal HFFI may apply in Memphis or rural tracts. This page records no dollar figure and will not invent a tract flag. Verify the current notice if a buyer wants that path. Buying in a food desert is a diligence essay, not a grant quote.

Kroger, Aldi, and Walmart set pressure, not price

Kroger, Aldi, and Walmart are the conventional set this pack records for Memphis. They steal trips. They do not set a multiple. An independent still has to explain the hours, the meat case, or the import book those banners will not copy. Do not price “a little under Walmart.” Do not treat a Kroger circular as a sold-comp.

Associated Wholesale Grocers (AWG), C&S Wholesale Grocers, and UNFI appear on many Tennessee independents. Confirm drop minimums, over-advances, and whether the incoming owner gets an account. Wholesaler agreements are a close item. FMI counted 45,575 U.S. supermarkets in 2024. Your fascia is one contract inside that channel. Keep independent versus banner honest.

Parkway and east Memphis international independents

Parkway / east Memphis international corridors are recorded as Latino and African independents. That note is qualitative. This page does not invent a population share, a store count, or a density figure. Drive the aisle. Ask which language the regulars speak. Ask which produce house, meat DSD, and importer will open a new account. A Latino carnecería and an African market can share a parkway and not share a freezer program. Recast each book on its own shrink, not on a blended “international” margin. If the seller is the only person who can greet the regulars, the transition is the deal. Write hours, not hopes, into the LOI. Ask who opens, who cuts, and who closes on a Tuesday when the seller is gone. How much does a grocery store owner make is an SDE question after that labor is real. It is not a weekly-sales rumor. Anatomy of a grocery P&L is how you see whether produce and meat are carrying the store or sinking it.

A Hispanic / Latino grocery and a Caribbean / African market are different books. Buying an ethnic market outside your community is the tourist warning. If the seller is the only cutter or the only closer, write transition hours into the LOI. The ethnic versus conventional essay is the format fork.

Recast department mix. Produce and meat can sink a storewide gross margin. Read shrink, margin, and turns and verifying sales with scan data. Tie weekly sales to scan and EBT deposits. Reject repeating inventory adjustments as add-backs.

The 4 percent food rate and what still taxes full

Tennessee state sales tax on food and food ingredients is 4 percent plus applicable local tax (Tennessee DOR SUT-53). Candy, dietary supplements, and prepared food are excluded from the reduced food rate. Confirm the city and county add-on on the Memphis address. A hot bar and a fountain program can move the tax mix more than the circular. See grocery sales tax. Sales-tax filings should corroborate the week.

The DOL consolidated table effective July 1, 2026 treats Tennessee as federal $7.25 — the state has no higher state minimum, so FLSA-covered employers pay $7.25. Confirm Tennessee DOL posters. Related-party hours that vanish at close are a labor hole. Put real wage back into the recast, then run the DSCR calculator.

SBA 7(a) can finance a change of ownership; the published maximum is $5 million. The file still has to look like a grocery the program can underwrite. Read SBA 7(a) for grocery and how much money you need.

What the agriculture desk and the beer board each own

Tennessee Department of Agriculture owns retail food on many grocery formats. Local health owns others, or shares the file. Confirm which desk stamped this address. A prepared-food program can pull the store toward a health inspection calendar the CIM never mentioned. Put that calendar next to the beer board. A wine privilege that is current and a beer permit that is expired is two different problems. Do not let the teaser blend them.

Ask for the last inspection, any pending violations, and whether the incoming owner must sit a new plan review. Red flags that should kill a grocery deal include a health file the seller will not open. Common reasons grocery sales fall apart include a beer board that will not calendar the transfer before the inventory count. Write both into the LOI.

A Mississippi-border buyer still needs Tennessee workpapers if the entity, the warehouse, or the employees sit in Shelby. A Shelby seller still needs Mississippi counsel if the box does. Name the state on every permit list. Working with attorneys and CPAs is how you keep those lists from colliding in escrow.

If the store is declining, say so in the recast. Selling a distressed or declining grocery is a different file from a stable independent. Do not hide a Walmart opening in the trade area behind a trophy multiple. This pack will not invent that opening either. Drive the area and read the circulars you can see.

Agencies that do not travel with the bill of sale

FNS will not let a Memphis buyer keep the seller’s SNAP retailer number. File new. Budget the EBT gap. Guides: SNAP when you sell and EBT diligence. No Memphis or Tennessee SNAP-retailer headcount appears in this pack.

WIC sits with Tennessee Department of Health — WIC. Lottery is a Tennessee Education Lottery retailer contract. Tobacco sits with Tennessee Department of Revenue and ABC as applicable. WIC, lottery, and tobacco checklists belong on a dated workplan next to the beer board.

Closing-day inventory is a procedure. Hold back unsellable. Count inventory at cost by department. Recasting a grocery P&L is the earnings method.

Memphis price band versus the lease clock

Price the going concern as negotiated multiples on recast SDE or EBITDA, then add sellable inventory at cost. Haircut for remaining lease term, beer-board calendar risk, and wine opt-in status at the address. Tools: valuation hub, how to value a grocery store, and the valuation calculator.

Sellers: keep the rumor off the sales floor. Start with a blind teaser and an NDA. Read confidential sale. Buyers: how to buy step by step is the sequence. Mark the Buyer Underwriting Workbook. Then book a confidential intro with the beer-board address named and the wine-privilege status printed. Jason Taken will not invent a Memphis sold-comp to paper over a jurisdiction that never opted in.

If the address is a Mississippi-border box, say the state on the first page of the teaser. Recast the ticket from the returns that match that address. A Shelby 4 percent food rate plus local add-on is not a DeSoto ticket. Counsel should sit on the same calendar as the beer board so the inventory count does not land in a week the board cannot hear. Timeline to sell is honest about how long local alcohol desks take. Put that calendar in the folder with the scan export. A river-metro name is not a tax regime. The state line is. Put the beer-board hearing date on the same sheet as the inventory-count night so the room is not counted in a week the board cannot sit.

An illustrative recast on Buying or selling a Memphis grocery store

Use this napkin recast on Buying or selling a Memphis grocery store when you book the call. It is labeled illustrative. BizBuySell's 2025 grocery sold-business earnings multiple averaged 3.38, with a 2021-2025 IQR of 1.60-3.15. Metro pages talk corridors and operators. They do not invent asking rents or establishment counts.

Input or output	Illustrative figure
Weekly sales (illustrative)	$228,000
Annual sales	$11,856,000
Recast SDE	$557,232 (4.7% of sales)
Inventory at cost	$658,667 (~18 turns)
Occupancy check	$438,672 / year (3.7% of sales)
Low going-concern	$1,689,546 at 1.85x SDE + inventory
High going-concern	$2,330,363 at 3.00x SDE + inventory
Sketch DSCR on a note	1.53

If weekly sales or shrink move 8 percent, the SDE and the note move with them. That is why Jason Taken starts with scan data and the lease, not with a neighbor's rumor multiple.

Book the intro call with your side of the table ready: seller files or buyer capital. The calendar is the only next step.