Grocery Store Business Broker · HedgeStone Business Advisors · Jason Taken
Last updated 2026-09-04
Separate the quota license from the grocery before you talk multiple. Then book a confidential intro with the ABT series named and three years of numbers you can recast. An owned quota seat and a leased seat that expires are not the same asset, even when both stores sell beer and wine. Grocery Store Business Broker — HedgeStone Business Advisors, led by Jason Taken — underwrites a Miami store as a Florida file first. Statewide tax and alcohol rules live on the Florida seller page and buyer page. This essay is the Dade file: quota liquor as its own asset, Publix and Sedano’s as trip stealers, Little Havana versus Little Haiti, and the Miami-Dade tax plus DOH/DACS split.
FMI’s 2025 supermarket facts — about $1 trillion in channel sales, $668,377 average weekly sales, $19.59 per selling square foot, and a 2.1 percent food-retailer net — are channel context. They are not a Calle Ocho Saturday. BizBuySell’s grocery and supermarket sold sample is the only sourced earnings multiple set on this site: 3.38 in 2025, 2.66 five-year average, interquartile range 1.60 to 3.15, and 0.43 times revenue. Those attach to recast earnings. They are not a Miami Beach asking-price table.
Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco (DBPR) issues the privilege. Beer and wine are commonly sold in grocery with the correct series; verify the series at the address. Florida is not on the grocery-spirits list this pack uses. Package-store and quota liquor licenses are a separate asset class. Quota licenses are a well-known limited series. Confirm county quota and whether the grocery owns or leases the license. ABT must approve a transfer. Quota value can sit apart from store SDE.
A CIM that folds an owned quota seat into the grocery multiple without a separate schedule is mixing two assets. A leased quota that expires or cannot assign is a hole, not a talking point. Ask counsel whether the county still has a transferable series at this address, and whether the grocery entity is the licensee or only a tenant of the privilege. Those answers change cash to close. Write own-versus-lease on the first page of the teaser so the tour is about the right asset, not the Publix circular. Read the quota license glossary, liquor-license due diligence, and transferring your liquor license. The liquor versus no-liquor essay is the format fork.
Tobacco also sits with ABT. Do not treat a tobacco permit as a sticker. WIC, lottery, and tobacco checklists belong on the same workplan.
Publix, Winn-Dixie, and Sedano’s / Presidente (regional Hispanic) are the competitive set this pack records for Miami. They explain why an independent lives on language, a bakery schedule, or an import book those banners will not copy. They do not set a multiple. Do not price “a little under Publix.” Do not treat a Sedano’s remodel as a sold-comp.
Associated Grocers of Florida, C&S Wholesale Grocers, and UNFI appear on many Florida 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 across conventional, limited-assortment, supercenter, warehouse, club, natural, and commissary formats. Your fascia is one contract. Keep independent versus banner honest.
A neighborhood grocery lives on hours and a lease. A Hispanic independent in Hialeah lives on authenticity and a perishable rack. Compare them only after you admit that.
Little Havana / Hialeah is recorded as Cuban and broader Hispanic independents. Little Haiti / North Miami is recorded as Haitian and Caribbean independents. Those notes are qualitative and cited to ACS-style corridor language. This page does not invent share-of-population percentages, a store count, or a density figure. Drive the aisle. Ask which Spanish or which Kreyòl the regulars speak. Ask which produce house, bakery, and importer will open a new account. A Cuban bakery schedule and a Haitian import book are not interchangeable labor. Recast the hours you will actually staff after the cousins leave. A tourist buyer who plans to “keep one cashier who speaks the language” is writing a shrink plan. Hot-food kitchen versus no kitchen matters when the café window is the traffic, not the center store. Prepared food also moves Florida’s tax mix. Confirm DOR TIP publications before you treat that window as exempt grocery.
A Hispanic / Latino grocery and a Caribbean / African market are different supply books. Buying an ethnic market outside your community is the tourist warning. If the seller is the only baker or the only closer, write transition hours into the LOI. The ethnic versus conventional essay is the format fork.
Recast department mix. Produce, meat, and prepared foods can sink a storewide gross margin that looks fine in a blend. Read shrink, margin, and turns and verifying sales with scan data. Florida’s prepared-food tax line makes the hot case a diligence item, not décor.
Miami-Dade local business tax plus the DOH / DACS food-permit split sit on the close calendar with ABT. Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services handles retail food in some formats; county health handles others. Confirm which desk owns this box. A new operator is a new file. Put those dates next to landlord consent. Lease assignment and lease due diligence are often the critical path. This pack does not publish a Miami rent-per-foot. Occupancy is a ratio from the lease and the P&L. Use the rent checker.
If the seller owns the building, recast the store on market rent first, then price the dirt as a second asset. Read buying a store with real estate. Hurricane and flood insurance are underwriting items. This page will not invent a premium.
Confirm Florida DOR tax-clearance and successor-liability practice on the asset sale. UCC Article 6 bulk-transfer statutes have been repealed in most states; that repeal does not erase tax successor risk. Read bulk sales and tax clearance.
Florida generally exempts grocery food products for human consumption from state sales tax, with defined exceptions such as candy, many beverages, and prepared food. Confirm Florida DOR TIP publications for the register mix. See grocery sales tax. Sales-tax filings should corroborate the week.
The DOL consolidated table effective July 1, 2026 lists Florida’s state minimum wage at $14.00. Confirm Florida DEO / DBPR posters. Local living-wage rules are limited. Related-party hours that vanish at close are a labor hole, not an add-back. 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: prove sales, recast earnings, count inventory at cost, and survive a new SNAP file. Read SBA 7(a) for grocery.
Federal HFFI and local food-access programs may apply in Miami-Dade. This page records no dollar figure and will not invent one. Verify the current notice.
USDA FNS: SNAP authorization does not transfer. The new owner files a new retailer application. Budget cash for the gap. Read SNAP when you sell and EBT diligence. This page does not publish a SNAP-retailer headcount for Miami or Florida.
WIC sits with Florida Department of Health — WIC. Lottery is a Florida Lottery retailer contract. Neither rides automatically on the bill of sale. Tie weekly sales to scan and EBT deposits. Hold back unsellable on the count. Closing-day inventory and recasting a grocery P&L are the method.
Bring the ABT series, the own-versus-lease fact on any quota seat, the Miami-Dade local business-tax receipt, and the desk that owns the food permit — DACS or county health. Bring three years of P&Ls and returns, a weekly-sales export you can tie to scan, and an inventory guess at cost by department. Preparing three years of financials is the seller’s job. How to read a CIM is the buyer’s filter. A CIM that pastes a listing-site average onto an unrecast tax-return profit is selling a sample, not a file.
Hurricane deductibles and flood coverage belong in that same folder. Ask for the current binder and what a new named insured will pay. This page will not invent a premium. A going-concern multiple that assumes last year’s insurance will survive a lender question is not a recast. Put the binder next to the lease.
Associated Grocers of Florida is a cooperative relationship on many independents. Confirm whether the incoming owner is eligible, what equity or deposit is required, and whether the seller’s over-advance has to be cleaned at close. That is cash to close, not décor. Use the buyer cash-to-close estimator after you put inventory, produce working capital, and SNAP lag back in.
If you are buying as a first-time operator, say so. Do I need grocery experience is an honest question. A Hialeah carnecería is not the place to learn Spanish on the job. Buying versus starting is the fork if the quota seat is the only reason you want the box. A license without a store that runs is still a license search.
Seller financing can fill a gap. It is structure. Read buying with seller financing. A note that depends on a quota the buyer cannot hold is not a note. Write ABT approval as a close condition.
Going-concern value is recast SDE or EBITDA times a negotiated multiple, plus sellable inventory at cost. Price the quota license, if owned, as its own conversation. Start from BizBuySell’s national bands and subtract lease holes, ABT lag, and a store that still needs the seller. The valuation hub and how to value a grocery store carry the method. Use the valuation calculator on this recast.
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 license series named and the own-versus-lease fact written down. Jason Taken will not invent a Miami sold-comp to fold a quota seat into grocery SDE.
If the quota is leased, bring the remaining term and the assignment clause. If it is owned, bring the county quota status and the last ABT transfer timeline you can document. Those are two different cash-to-close stories. Timeline to sell is honest about how long ABT can take. Put DACS or county health on that same calendar so the food permit and the quota do not race each other to a close date neither desk can meet.
These figures are a teaching walk-through for How to underwrite a Miami grocery store, not a quote and not a sold comp. Order of operations: weekly sales, recast SDE, inventory at cost, then a multiple band. Metro pages talk corridors and operators. They do not invent asking rents or establishment counts.
| Input or output | Illustrative figure |
|---|---|
| Weekly sales (illustrative) | $168,000 |
| Annual sales | $8,736,000 |
| Recast SDE | $270,816 (3.1% of sales) |
| Inventory at cost | $436,800 (~20 turns) |
| Occupancy check | $235,872 / year (2.7% of sales) |
| Low going-concern | $897,187 at 1.70x SDE + inventory |
| High going-concern | $1,289,870 at 3.15x SDE + inventory |
| Sketch DSCR on a note | 1.46 |
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.
Print these, mark them up, and bring the marked copy to the intro. They are educational. They are not a valuation letter and not a listing. All downloadable guides.
Have the file ready so the hour is a recast, not a scavenger hunt. Then pick a time.
Get a specialist on the other side of the table
Grocery deals turn on licenses, inventory, and a recast a lender will believe. Book the intro and bring the file.
Book an Intro Call With Jason TakenNot automatically. Florida quota liquor licenses are a limited series and can have separate market value from the store. Confirm whether the grocery owns or leases the license, the county quota, and the ABT transfer path before you fold spirits into going-concern value.
Florida splits retail food between the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and county health depending on format. Miami-Dade also collects a local business tax. Put both desks on the close calendar with ABT.
No. Little Havana / Hialeah is a Cuban and broader Hispanic book. Little Haiti / North Miami is a Haitian and Caribbean book. Different language, produce, and import files. Qualitative only — no invented population shares.
Florida generally exempts grocery food products for human consumption from state sales tax, with defined exceptions such as candy, many beverages, and prepared food. Confirm DOR TIP publications. The DOL July 1, 2026 table lists Florida at $14.00.
No. USDA FNS: SNAP authorization does not transfer. The new owner files a new retailer application.
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Book an Intro Call With Jason TakenThis page is educational information from Grocery Store Business Broker (HedgeStone Business Advisors). It is not legal, tax, or investment advice. Licensing, tax, and financing rules vary by state and deal. Confirm every item with counsel and your lender before you sign.
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