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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nation's Restaurant News
By C. Dickinson Waters , 05/2001
In the foodservice dot-com jungle, RestMart.com connects
restaurant sellers with potential buyers via classified ads
on the Internet and it is attracting an increasing number
of listings and drawing thousands of visitors each month.
According to Bryan Sussman, founder and president of the
Boca Raton, Fla.-based Restmart.com, the company’s Internet
site receives "between 15,000 and 20,000 hits per month" from
people interested in the 300 to 500 restaurants listed for
sale at any given time.
Sussman launched the Web site he described as "an Internet
advertising agency just for restaurants" in November 1998.
"I bought a book on HTML and sat down one weekend and designed
the site myself," Sussman said. "We wanted to keep it very
simple — let a restaurant seller come to the site and complete
an online form to create a classified ad." Sussman explained
that his site also offers optional bells and whistles, such
as photographs or colored borders, for an added cost of $5
to $20 per listing.
According to Sussman, Restmart.com differentiates itself
by advertising and promoting its service to restaurant buyers
via traditional print media. Whatever the statistics on ad
response may be, some sellers have had success advertising
their businesses on the sites.
Amy Oelhafen of Pfefferle Investments said her company sold
a "full-service, family restaurant in Appleton, Wis., for
its full asking price of approximately $900,000" after listing
it on Restmart.com for eight months. "We were able to reach
a broader market of people interested in buying a restaurant,"
Oelhafen said, explaining that the eventual buyer was from
Duluth, Minn., outside the range of Pfefferle’s usual advertising
vehicles.
According to Sussman, the average selling price of the restaurants
listed on Restmart.com is $500,000, with the average ad running
for a period of two and one-half months. Sussman said 60 percent
of the listings on the site come directly from owners with
the remainder originating with real-estate brokers and agents.
Deborah Cook, a licensed commercial real-estate broker with
Wilmington, N.C.-based Coastal Realty, sees the Internet as
"another tool to help you reach people." Cook recently listed
two 7,000-square-foot restaurants on Restmart.com in the hopes
of "pulling in regional and national potential buyers."
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