Hello SMB Deal Hunters!
I’m excited to share 5 new off-market businesses for sale sourced directly by our team in today's Off The Grid issue.
👇 In Today's Issue:
#1: Drive-Through Beer Distributor in PA with Absentee Owner and $250K EBITDA
🔎 Looking for deals in your area? We can source them for you.
This issue is proudly sponsored by SMB Deal Exchange, our new platform for connecting buyers and sellers of off-market businesses.
COMMUNITY WINS
Here’s what one SMB Deal Hunter Pro member shared this past week:

👀 August was supposed to be a “slow month,” but 35 Pro members went under contract on more than $46M of businesses, and 10 more deals closed worth over $14M.
If that's what a slow month looks like, September should be interesting now that sellers are back from vacation and deal flow is picking up.
The next 90 days are also the last real window before the holidays, so to get buyers off the sidelines, we're adding a one-time end-of-quarter bonus for anyone who joins Pro this month.
👉 Book a free 1-on-1 strategy call and we'll build your search together: what you can realistically afford, the deals that fit, and your financing options.
NEW OFF-MARKET DEALS
These deals span the country. For custom-sourced deals in your area, click here.
1/ Drive-Through Beer Distributor
📍 Location: Pennsylvania
💼 EBITDA: $250,000
📊 Revenue: $1,500,000
📅 Established: 2006
💭 My 2 Cents: In Pennsylvania a beer distributor is a store you buy beer from and carry home, and it is the only kind of store allowed to sell you a full case. Everyone else is capped at 192 ounces per sale, 16 twelve-ounce cans, eight short of a 24-can case. And when money gets tight, drinking moves toward exactly this kind of store: in 2009 sales at bars and restaurants fell 4.6% while sales at liquor stores, supermarkets and other off-premise retailers rose 1.2%. This one has run since 2006 out of a building with a drive-through lane, and three people cover the whole operation, the full-time one a salaried manager who does the ordering, receiving, and banking while the owner does not work in the business at all. That said, I'd want cases moved by year rather than dollars, because shelf prices have been rising and a flat dollar figure hides a shrinking count. The license and the lease are the same question here, since a distributor license is issued for one specific address, so I'd want what is left on the lease alongside the license's citation history and standing with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Then how much of the volume comes through the drive-through lane rather than inside, since that lane is the reason this store is not interchangeable with the next one. Regardless, Pennsylvania caps distributor licenses at one for every 30,000 county residents (with a floor of five) and issues no new ones where a county is at its limit, so the usual punishment for a profitable retail store, somebody opening the same thing down the street, is not a risk here.
2/ Custom Graphics and Sign Company
📍 Location: Minnesota
💼 EBITDA: $900,000
📊 Revenue: $6,000,000
📅 Established: 2000
💭 My 2 Cents: Most sign work is one job at a time. Somebody opens a store, buys a sign, and does not need another for ten years. The exception is maintenance, and the LED conversion wave has made it a real program business: relamping, face changes, night patrols where somebody drives the lots after dark to find which signs have gone out, and conversions that cut a sign's energy use by up to 80% by changing what is inside the cabinet rather than replacing it. This company has been at it since 2000 and now runs 26 employees, with the owner mostly out of the day-to-day and his son moved into head of finance and operations, and its large anchor accounts keep coming back year after year. So the first thing I'd want is which kind of repeat that is: maintenance billed on a schedule, or customers coming back with a new project every few years. Then who those anchor accounts are and whether any of them run multiple locations, since that is what turns a customer into a program. Whether the shop pulls its own permits and runs its own installs is worth checking too, since that is both the margin and the reason a bigger customer stays. All of it runs on people, and that is the part of this trade getting harder: two in five sign companies say their biggest problem is finding them, which makes a 26-person shop with a trained crew harder to build than to buy.
3/ High-Voltage Electrical and Solar Site Contractor
📍 Location: New Mexico
💼 EBITDA: $746,000
📊 Revenue: $1,800,000
📅 Established: 2019
💭 My 2 Cents: New Mexico draws a line at 5,000 volts. Below it, an ordinary commercial electrical license covers the work. Above it, distribution and transmission circuits, towers and substations, takes a separate EL-1 license that most electrical contractors do not hold. This company has worked that side of the line since 2019, on solar sites, subdivisions, sports lighting, and the directional drilling that puts power and fiber under a road without digging it up. It runs on seven regular employees plus subcontractors on the bigger jobs, with roughly $1 million of equipment that may come with the sale. The two owners are 50/50, one on estimating, permitting, sales and customer relationships, the other on equipment and field crews, and one of them is on his way out. Which of them the EL-1 hangs on is the first thing I'd confirm, since New Mexico ties it to a named person with four years of qualifying experience. Then that equipment, listed out with hours and age. Then three years of revenue split between the solar work and everything else, and how much of each year came from one or two large jobs. Solar itself is forecast flat for the next five years. What is not flat is the grid: utilities are planning close to $1.3 trillion of capital spending through 2030, and none of it produces a watt until somebody licensed above 5,000 volts ties it in.
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Amy is an attorney, but she spent most of her career in tech startups.
She practiced securities law early on, the law around raising money, which kept her on planes hunting for clients.
She founded two startups of her own and eventually sold her stake in the second.
Then she stepped away from work entirely for two years, and by the time she was ready to come back, the family was living off savings.
Her husband, a doctor, had just left the hospital to start his own company.
So with young kids at home, she wasn't going to bet the house on a second brand new business.
She looked for one to buy instead, but she had no system and no idea where to start, so she joined SMB Deal Hunter Pro.
She never expected to practice law again, so she chased HVAC and auto repair for a year and lost 5 deals in a row.
When her last deal collapsed, a friend asked why she was running from what she knew best.
Her answer was that most law firms are solo attorneys with no structure. She wanted a company, not a job.
The next day she searched law firms and found the one she had passed a year before.
5 months later, she closed that same deal.
Today she runs an 18-person law firm ten minutes from home, and it clears about $670K/yr in profit.
She is already restructuring the systems that held it back, and a month in, she says the place already feels like family.
4/ Jewelry Tools and Supplies Distributor
📍 Location: New Jersey
💼 EBITDA: $700,000
📊 Revenue: $4,000,000
📅 Established: 1992
💭 My 2 Cents: Nothing at a jeweler's bench lasts. Saw blades snap, burs go dull, polishing compound wears down, and solder gets used up, so the supplier who stocks them gets ordered from again without anybody signing an agreement. That has been this company's business with jewelry shops since 1992. It stocks more than 5,000 items and ships 10 to 15 pallets a week, holds distribution rights on several products that are exclusive or close to it, and runs its own truck out of state every week, sometimes with 12,000 pounds on it. Eight people do all of that, and while the owner is hands-on enough to open and close the building himself, an existing employee has already been trained on much of what he does. His 50/50 partner is the one retiring, and the German manufacturer behind several of those exclusive lines is his relationship. So I'd want those distribution agreements in writing, with their terms and the name on them, the German one first. What percentage of revenue comes from those products rather than from the catalog anyone can sell is the number I'd chase next. Then the lease, because the retiring partner will not commit to a new one and $1 million of stock across 5,000 items has to sit somewhere. Part of that stock was bought before the tariffs, so those shelves would cost a buyer more to fill today than the books say they are worth.
5/ Charter Bus Company
📍 Location: Florida
💼 EBITDA: $300,000
📊 Revenue: $1,190,000
📅 Established: 2019
💭 My 2 Cents: A charter operator usually sells every trip it runs, chasing the wedding, the school trip, and the corporate shuttle one booking at a time. This one mostly does not. It holds contracts with Flixbus, where the platform sells the tickets and fills the seats while the bus, the driver, and the fuel stay on the operator's side. It also carries cruise industry clients, whose ships arrive on a schedule published a year ahead. The company has run since 2019 with two people and two buses on the road. Two buses producing $1,190,000 is about $595,000 a coach, which is a lot of work for two vehicles, and the company used to run more of them: several were pulled from service when their manufacturer left the United States and parts stopped being available. So I'd line the revenue history up against the fleet history year by year, because these numbers may have been earned by a fleet that is no longer on the road. Term, notice period, and how the split is calculated are what I'd want out of the Flixbus agreement, because every cost here moves with fuel and wages while the revenue moves with somebody else's pricing. And I'd want the make, age, mileage, and parts situation on the two coaches still running. Demand here arrives already sold, so what limits this company is how many buses it owns, which makes growth a financing decision rather than a sales one.
COMMUNITY PERKS
• Ready to buy and operate a $1M+ business? Partner with my team and get expert support at every step.
• Want to invest passively in SMB acquisitions? Get access to investment opportunities.
• Get a personal introduction to my preferred SBA 7(a) lender, non-SBA lenders, Quality of Earnings providers, or legal counsel
• Raising capital for your deal? I’ll connect you with investors from the SMB Deal Hunter Community.
• Interested in selling your business? I’ll help you connect with buyers from the SMB Deal Hunter Community.
RECENT PODCAST EPISODE
Clem spent his whole career climbing an engineering ladder he never actually enjoyed.
So instead of chasing the next title, he joined SMB Deal Hunter Pro to go buy a business.
Our team brought him an off-market automotive marketing agency doing $1.5M a year, and he closed it with just 5% down. (10% is usually the minimum, and getting in with 5% down is much harder under the new SBA rules)
Then the first year tested him.
Revenue dipped in the opening months, and he had to adapt.
He had it back on track within 3-4 months but learned quite a few lessons along the way.
From there, he rebuilt the agency leaner on purpose, and the margins climbed from 20% to 70%.
Today it runs on about 3 hours of his week under a general manager he hired, and it's funding the second business he's building on top of it.
And for our audio-only listeners, jump in and listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
THAT’S A WRAP
See you tomorrow!

-Helen Guo
Find Me On Twitter
Find Me On LinkedIn
P.S. I'd love your feedback. Tap the poll below or reply to this email.
How was today's newsletter?
Disclaimer
This publication is a newsletter only and the information provided herein is the opinion of our editors and writers only. Any transaction or opportunity of any kind is provided for information only; SMB Deal Hunter does not verify nor confirm information. SMB Deal Hunter is not making any offer to readers to participate in any transaction or opportunity described herein.



