New Deals: A semi-absentee catering company running 600 events a year, funeral home group with $3.6M of owned real estate, and 3 other finds...

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NEW DEALS

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📍 Location: Arizona
💰 Asking Price: $1,400,000
💼 EBITDA: $490,000
📊 Revenue: $4,100,000
📅 Established: 1996

💭 My 2 Cents: A venue charges a commission on the caterer's invoice for working its rooms, usually 10% to 20% of the total. Caterers on the venue's preferred list pay the low end of that range and outside caterers pay the high end, so a preferred position is worth money twice: it delivers the client, and it costs less to serve them. This company has held those preferred positions at Arizona attractions, museums and event venues since 1996, and now runs roughly 600 corporate, wedding and social events a year, clustered between October and April when Arizona is cool enough to be outside. Production runs out of a purpose-built commercial kitchen, available to buy for an additional $3,300,000 or to lease at market with an option to buy. Both owners work part time, with a manager over every department and a salaried executive chef and executive sous chef on staff. That said, I'd want to know how many of those 600 events come through the top two or three venues, and whether the company is the only caterer approved at any of them. I'd also want to know how much of the calendar already contracted into 2027 is signed with deposits collected. Then margin by event type, because a corporate lunch and a plated wedding price the same food very differently. One of the best things about a catering business is that the money arrives before the work does: a peak Saturday is booked 12 to 18 months out with a deposit attached, and most of the balance lands two to four weeks before anyone cooks.

📍 Location: Virginia
💰 Asking Price: $1,895,000
💼 EBITDA: $496,281
📊 Revenue: $1,975,525
📅 Established: 1994

💭 My 2 Cents: Commercial cleaning has an unusually wide spread in how well it gets run. In one industry benchmark 41% of contractors reported losing more than half their staff inside a year, while 20% lost fewer than a tenth. This company serves commercial and multifamily residential clients, many of those relationships already past 10 years, with site supervisors and account managers holding the day to day client contact. Roughly 50 people run it around the clock, and growth has come from referrals with no formal sales function behind it. I'd start with the date of the last price increase on each account, because an account that has absorbed one is not out shopping. Then its own turnover along with where it recruits and how it trains, since that is what separates the two halves of that benchmark I mentioned previously. Then how many accounts buy both services rather than just one. Janitorial contracts run on 30 to 90 days notice, so the fact that this company has ten-year accounts speaks volumes to the quality and reliability of its services.

📍 Location: Connecticut
💰 Asking Price: $7,950,000
💼 EBITDA: $657,199
📊 Revenue: $4,556,537
📅 Established: 2004

💭 My 2 Cents: A funeral home can know years in advance that a particular family will call it, because a prepaid contract says so. What is interesting is that Connecticut makes the home put that money into escrow within 15 days and leave it there until the service is actually performed, with the interest credited to the family rather than to the home, so while it is work already spoken for, the prepaid book is not cash in the business. This group runs three locations it owns outright, a livery fleet of limousines, a hearse and transport vehicles, and 46 people including its licensed funeral directors. The asking price looks steep against the earnings, but it includes those three buildings, appraised at $3,662,000. The first thing I'd ask is what share of that prepaid book carries a guaranteed price, because on a guaranteed contract the home has to deliver the funeral at the price set years ago and cover any increase in costs itself. Then the case mix for the last five years, split three ways: burial, cremation with a service, and direct cremation. Then case volume location by location, because three buildings on one back office can hide one that is not covering itself. Cremation is already 63.4% of American funerals and is headed for 82.3% by 2045, which matters less than it sounds: a full-service cremation averages $6,280 to $6,970 against $7,848 for a burial, and it is only the direct cremation, at $2,202 with no service at all, that takes the money out of the room.

📍 Location: Nationwide
💰 Asking Price: $3,250,000
💼 EBITDA: $481,000
📊 Revenue: $2,500,000
📅 Established: 1994

💭 My 2 Cents: Most states make an insurer above a certain size run a fraud unit and file a plan for how it investigates suspicious claims. Almost none of them make the carrier do the watching itself, and the model rules the states built this on say outright that a discrete task like surveillance can go to an approved outside vendor. That is the demand this firm has been serving for carriers, third party administrators, self insured employers and defense counsel. It keeps 17 people on staff and hundreds of subcontracted investigators, with no offices at all and ownership working remotely alongside everyone else. That said, I'd want to know which carriers and administrators keep this firm on their approved vendor list, which in this trade is called a panel, and how many assignments each of them sent last year, since a place on one takes years to earn and gets reviewed on performance. I'd also want to know how many of those subcontractors worked more than a handful of files, because investigator licenses are issued state by state with almost no reciprocity between them, which makes the bench a map of where this firm can legally work. The split between surveillance and desk work like database and social media checks is worth pulling out too, since only one of them puts a person in a car for a day. The moat here is the panel seat, and it is the asset a buyer has to carry through the transition intact.

📍 Location: Wyoming
💰 Asking Price: $1,600,000
💼 EBITDA: $509,568
📊 Revenue: $2,139,495
📅 Established: 1973

💭 My 2 Cents: A glass shop usually rises and falls with construction, since storefronts and shower doors get installed when somebody is putting up a building. The auto glass side does not work that way, because a windshield cracks on its own schedule and gets replaced whether anyone is building anything. This one runs flat glass fabrication and installation, retail and contractor paint sales built around a premium national brand, and a full auto glass operation under a single roof. The location is high traffic and keeps walk-in repair work coming. Seven people run it, and an experienced on-staff manager already directs the day to day and is willing to stay. The paint brand agreement is the first thing I'd read closely, including whether the brand can open its own store in the same market, because some premium paint brands sell only through independent dealers while others compete directly with theirs. Then whether the contractor accounts at the paint counter and the glass shop are the same builders, because if they are, this business is more concentrated than three revenue lines make it look. I’d also want to know whether the auto glass side calibrates the cameras behind a new windshield in house or sends that work out. The reason that’s worth understanding is calibrating those cameras needs roughly 30 by 50 feet of floor, level to within 10 millimeters, under controlled lighting, and about 80% of collision facilities don't have the room. The shop that does ends up doing everyone else's.