Grocery Store Business Broker · HedgeStone Business Advisors · Jason Taken
Last updated 2026-09-04
Bring the municipal ABC class, the Wakefern or warehouse letter, and fifty-two weeks of scan to the first sitting. Then book a confidential intro. Grocery Store Business Broker — HedgeStone Business Advisors, led by Jason Taken — will recast the New Jersey file you actually run, not a ShopRite circular someone drove past on the Turnpike. Email jason.taken@hedgestone.com if you want that hour on the calendar.
Census County Business Patterns 2023 counts 2,405 New Jersey establishments under NAICS 445110, supermarkets and other grocery retailers except convenience. Census Vintage 2024 puts the July 1, 2024 state population at 9,500,851. Those two figures describe a dense grocery map. They are not a sold-comp and they are not a density premium you get to invent. FMI’s channel facts — $1 trillion in 2025 supermarket sales, 45,575 U.S. stores in 2024, average weekly supermarket sales of $668,377, $19.59 weekly sales per selling square foot, and a 2.1 percent average net for food retailers — are national. Your week is the recast.
ShopRite independents in this state are cooperative members. Wakefern Food Corp. is the warehouse and the membership file. Equity, drop minimums, and whether a purchaser can be admitted do not travel because you printed “ShopRite” on a teaser. Ask the cooperative what a change of ownership requires before you treat the warehouse as an asset that conveys. Wholesaler and banner agreements when you sell is the longer note. Wholesaler is the vocabulary.
C&S Wholesale Grocers and UNFI also invoice New Jersey independents. Over-advances and personal guarantees travel with the buyer or they become a closing condition. A seller who wants the warehouse to “just stay” without a consent letter is selling a hope. Write the consent into the LOI.
Stop & Shop (Ahold Delhaize), Acme (Albertsons Cos.), and Aldi set trip expectations in different counties. They are competitive wallpaper. They are not your sold comps. An Ironbound Portuguese independent does not recast as a Shore Acme with better linguica. Independent versus banner is the format fork.
The named alcohol agency is the New Jersey Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Grocery typically sells beer under a limited privilege. Wine and spirits sit on plenary retail distribution — package — licenses. Those licenses are population-quota limited in many municipalities. Municipal ABC plus state ABC must approve. A quota license can carry market value apart from the grocery going concern. Confirm the class on the wall. Liquor license and transferring your liquor license are the process pages. Liquor license due diligence is the file work.
A buyer who treats New Jersey like a grocery-spirits state will mis-read the cooler. A seller who capitalizes a plenary retail license as if it were ordinary beer privilege is selling a story. Write the class the way ABC writes it. Privileges are not automatic with an asset sale.
New Jersey generally exempts eligible food for home consumption from sales tax. Prepared food and candy or soft-drink definitions matter. Confirm Division of Taxation food guidance against the register mix. A hot-food program coded as grocery will not survive a recon. Anatomy of a grocery P&L is how you catch it. State-by-state grocery sales tax is the longer map.
New Jersey bulk-sale tax clearance — Form C-9600 — is a well-known asset-sale requirement. Confirm current Division of Taxation bulk-sale instructions. UCC Article 6 bulk-transfer statutes have been repealed in most states. That repeal does not erase successor risk. Hold back in escrow if counsel says so. Successor liability is the risk name. Bulk sales and tax clearance belongs in the memo. Tax clearance certificate is the document name.
Retail food sits with the New Jersey Department of Health and local health departments. WIC sits with New Jersey Department of Health — WIC. Tobacco sits with the New Jersey Division of Taxation. New Jersey Lottery is a separate retailer contract if tickets are on the counter. None of those is automatic with the bill of sale. Walk WIC, lottery, and tobacco as its own calendar.
USDA FNS is blunt: SNAP authorization does not transfer. The new owner files a new retailer application. Build downtime into working capital. What happens to SNAP authorization when you sell is the federal rule. This research pack left SNAP retailer counts null, so this page does not invent a New Jersey EBT-store census.
Newark, Essex, and Hudson hold Portuguese, Brazilian, and Latino independents — Ironbound is the corridor buyers already name. Bergen and Passaic hold Korean independents around Fort Lee and Palisades Park. Central Jersey along Oak Tree and Iselin is a South Asian independent book. South Jersey and the Atlantic Shore mix Philadelphia spillover with seasonal volume. Those are qualitative notes from the research file. Do not invent a population share. Do not invent rent.
A tourist who wants “a New Jersey grocery” without naming the corridor is not underwriting. Buying an ethnic market outside your community is honest about language on the floor and the import book. Neighborhood grocery is a different format from a destination import box.
Keep the rumor off Ferry Street and off Oak Tree Road. Confidential sale starts with a blind teaser and an NDA. Employees learn from DSD drivers. Shrink follows the rumor. Should I tell my employees is a date, not a slogan.
BizBuySell’s grocery and supermarket sold sample is the sourced national band this site uses: 3.38 average earnings multiple in 2025, 2.66 over five years, IQR 1.60–3.15, and 0.43 average revenue multiple on the 2025 sold set. It is not a Hudson County comp. Apply it to recast SDE after you put market labor and market rent back in, then add inventory at cost. This page will not invent a worked SDE dollar sketch. How to value a grocery store and the valuation hub are the method. Grocery store multiples report is the same band.
The U.S. Department of Labor WHD table effective July 1, 2026 lists New Jersey at $15.92, or $15.23 for employers with fewer than six people and for seasonal employment. Most independents that clear that headcount should recast at the higher figure. Confirm NJ DOL and any local paid-sick rules. A related-party wage that only works because cousins are unpaid will reverse on day one. Handling employees, union contracts, and WARN if UFCW or headcount rules apply.
SBA 7(a) can finance a change of ownership; the published maximum is $5 million. Scan, tax returns, and a lease remaining term that a credit officer will accept still have to exist. DSCR is the coverage test. Unreported cash will not survive that test. Can I sell with unreported cash sales is the honest answer.
If the building conveys, it is a second price with a real-estate licensee in New Jersey. Recast the store on a market rent you can defend. Selling with a lease versus real estate keeps the piles apart. This pack publishes no rent-per-foot. Lease due diligence is assignment, remaining term, options, exclusive use, and CAM.
New Jersey Food Desert Relief and HFFI-style programs have been announced in various years. Confirm the current NJEDA notice rather than writing a stale cap into the purchase price. Do not treat a hoped-for grant as SDE.
South Jersey and the Atlantic Shore mix Philadelphia spillover with a summer week that a February CIM cannot hide. Pull a full year of scan before you let a Shore seller talk about “the season” as if it were the year. A buyer who funds in September still has to carry January. Write the shape of the week into the CIM. Verifying sales with scan data is the discipline. Preparing three years of financials is the stack. A Shore box that only looks good in July is a different file from an Ironbound independent that rings the same language every Tuesday.
Assignment language on a New Jersey shopping-center lease is often the whole critical path. Exclusive-use clauses written when ShopRite or Acme was the named cotenant can block a buyer who wants to keep a meat case or a prepared-food program. Exclusive use and co-tenancy belong in the abstract before anyone tours. A landlord who treats consent as a rent reset changes the recast. Write consent as a dated condition in the LOI. What is a reasonable rent-to-sales ratio is the occupancy question this pack will not answer with an invented percent.
The butcher, the baker, and the person who speaks Portuguese, Korean, or Gujarati on the floor are transition hours, not décor. Transition and training periods is how you write those hours. Fair transition period if the owner is the only cutter. A tourist buyer who wants the Ironbound mix without the language will not keep the week. Buying an ethnic market outside your community applies in Bergen the same way it applies in Newark.
Count night in a New Jersey independent is not a ShopRite reset. Import dry grocery, a bakery that turns overnight, and a produce rack that dies in two days do not share a clock. Write department-level count rules into the APA. How inventory is counted at closing and closing-day inventory count procedures are the procedure. Holdback if unsellable or an ABC lag needs a pad. How does inventory get paid at closing is the money question. A seller who wants retail on the stockroom is selling a markup the buyer cannot keep.
C-9600 and municipal ABC do not share a Tuesday with FNS. Sequence Taxation, the town board, state ABC, the landlord, and the new SNAP application as dated steps. Timeline to sell is dominated by those clocks, not by how fast you want to be done. The LOI terms that matter for sellers is the longer list. Working with attorneys and CPAs so counsel does not rediscover bulk sale in week six.
Wakefern members should put the cooperative admission letter next to the lease abstract. A purchaser who cannot join is not buying a ShopRite; they are buying a box that may lose the warehouse. Nearby ShopRite operators, multi-store independents who already survive municipal ABC, and a manager with documented capital are the usual qualified list. A tourist who wants “a New Jersey grocery” without a corridor name is not the list. How it works is the firm sequence. Documents you need to sell include the ABC class, the C-9600 starting file, and the warehouse letter.
Bring three years of returns, the municipal ABC class, the C-9600 starting file, the warehouse or Wakefern letter, and an honest note on who cuts meat and who speaks the aisle. Grocery Store Business Broker will not invent a New Jersey sold-comp, a plenary-retail dollar, or a SNAP-retailer count. We will recast the store you run and map ABC, Taxation, FNS, and the landlord.
Book a confidential intro to start that file. Email jason.taken@hedgestone.com if you want the hour in writing. About Jason Taken is the desk. The sibling page is buy a grocery store in New Jersey. The next step is the recast, not a sign in the vestibule.
Price language for Sell a grocery store in New Jersey is (recast SDE x a defendable multiple) + inventory at cost, plus or minus lease and license risk. The table is one consistent example for this URL. State pages add the tax, wage, and alcohol-agency facts for this jurisdiction. They do not invent a local sold-comp set.
| Input or output | Illustrative figure |
|---|---|
| Weekly sales (illustrative) | $124,000 |
| Annual sales | $6,448,000 |
| Recast SDE | $335,296 (5.2% of sales) |
| Inventory at cost | $403,000 (~16 turns) |
| Occupancy check | $161,200 / year (2.5% of sales) |
| Low going-concern | $1,073,592 at 2.00x SDE + inventory |
| High going-concern | $1,358,594 at 2.85x SDE + inventory |
| Sketch DSCR on a note | 1.48 |
Inventory is cash at close, not a multiple. Confusing the two is how sellers over-ask and buyers under-cash the wire.
Bring three years of P&Ls, weekly sales, and the lease abstract to the intro call. Jason will tell you whether this band is even in the conversation.
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 grounded read on what buyers will pay
We recast SDE, separate inventory at cost, and price license risk. Download the seller playbook, then put 30 minutes on the calendar.
Get a Free Grocery Store Valuation ConversationOften it is a separate, quota-scarce asset. Municipal ABC plus the New Jersey Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control must approve. Price the license only after you read the class on the wall, not after a rumor from the beer cooler.
Wakefern is a cooperative. Equity, drop minimums, and whether a purchaser can be admitted are diligence items. A teaser that says ShopRite without the membership file is incomplete.
New Jersey bulk-sale tax clearance through the Division of Taxation is a well-known asset-sale requirement. Confirm current C-9600 instructions and any escrow holdback with counsel before you pick a Tuesday.
No. Ironbound and Hudson Latino and Brazilian books are not Fort Lee or Palisades Park import books. Price the aisle, the language on the floor, and the remaining lease term.
The U.S. Department of Labor WHD table effective July 1, 2026 lists New Jersey at $15.92, or $15.23 for employers with fewer than six people and for seasonal employment. Recast on what this store actually pays and confirm NJ DOL posters.
Sell on your terms, not on a listing site
HedgeStone Business Advisors runs a quiet process: recast, qualified operators, and a close that survives the count. The only next step is the intro call.
Book a Confidential Seller ConsultationThis 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.
Ready when you are. Jason Taken will talk through the file.
Book a confidential intro