Liquor Store / Package Store Acquisition & SBA Underwriting Financial Model

Most liquor-store templates are startup or operating forecasts, and most brokers headline a big revenue number. But a package store's revenue is inflated: tobacco (~12% of sales at a razor-thin margin) and lottery/ATM (pass-through commission) make up ~15% of the revenue and only ~6.5% of the gross profit. Pay a multiple on that revenue and you overpay. This model reads the store the way a disciplined buyer and an SBA lender do — on the gross profit and the normalized SDE.

What it does - Gross-Profit-by-Category engine — spirits, wine, beer, tobacco, lottery/ATM and other, each at its own gross margin, build the gross profit bottom-up (blended GM ~25% on a $2.6M store). You see exactly where the money is: spirits + wine are ~68% of the gross profit; tobacco + lottery inflate the revenue but barely move the profit. - The honesty a broker's sheet skips. It recognizes shrinkage (2% of revenue — theft, breakage, receiving errors) as an explicit line; it hires a market manager to replace the owner who works 60–70h/week behind the counter; and it prices on the SDE *after* those, not the seller's owner-free, shrink-free number. The result is the true DSCR (1.33x) shown next to the naive broker DSCR (1.96x) — the gap is the manager and the shrink. - Inventory at cost, outside the price. A package store's inventory (~$464k at ~87 days on this store) is real capital the buyer funds on top of the goodwill — not a rounding error. The model sizes it from your inventory turns and carries it in Sources & Uses. - License as a separate asset. A toggle for open/admin states ($0) vs quota states (a transferable license worth $250k–$1M+), with the appraisal-vs-price gap bridged by a seller note. - The down-case that matters. Big-box (Total Wine, Costco, grocery), the FTC's 2024 price-discrimination action, and the collapse of online delivery can compress margins and volume together. A combined −250bps gross-margin + −10% volume shock drops DSCR to 0.63x — well below the 1.25x floor. Profitable today; under pressure in a normal squeeze. That is the honest headline. - SBA 7(a) capital stack — buyer equity, seller note (full-standby vs amortizing toggle as the DSCR lever), and the SBA loan that fills the rest, with the lender's DSCR gate and a 5-year cash-on-cash and equity-multiple exit. No IRR is printed (deliberately — on one small deal it is hostage to the exit multiple).

Inside: a 10-sheet Excel model (every calc a formula, Google-Sheets-safe, no macros), a 20+ page PDF guide, and a benchmarks sheet with sourced ranges. Three store profiles (Balanced Neighborhood / Spirits-&-Wine Destination / Convenience-&-Tobacco) reload the multiple, working-capital peg, capex and shrink.

Educational planning tool, not financial, legal, tax or investment advice.