USDA B&I Feasibility Study Case Study: Reopening a Closed Rural Grocery Store in Plains, Kansas, Not Feasible as Proposed and Feasible as Restructured

A community-owned corporation proposes to buy and reopen Grand Avenue Market, a 9,300 SF purpose-built grocery store in Plains, Kansas, a Meade County town of about 1,000 people on US-54, that opened in December 2021 after a twenty-year effort, cost $2,073,000, and closed on March 31, 2026 after voters rejected the half-cent sales tax meant to repay its loan. The sponsor's proposal of a $1,071,016 USDA Business and Industry guaranteed loan at 75 percent of a $1,428,021 project cost repeats the failure: a 9,300 SF rural independent selling $2,600,000 a year at a 27 percent realized gross margin earns $60,173 of EBITDA, 2.3 percent of sales, and covers $101,333 of debt service at 0.48x in Year 3. The store's economics are not the problem; they are the sector's, where rural independents under 1,000 people run net margins near 1 percent and a 9,300 SF store's total electricity bill runs $49,752 a year. The problem is the debt. Restructured with a $380,000 B&I guaranteed loan, the largest the store carries at 1.25x, and $1,023,490 of community stock equity, a Kansas Healthy Food Initiative award and sponsor cash, the store covers at 1.34x in Year 3, 1.40x in Year 4 and 1.46x in Year 5, with a $120,000 reserve carrying the Year 1 and Year 2 shortfalls of $78,548 and $31,999. Determination: not feasible as proposed; feasible as restructured, conditioned on the disposition of the original equipment and the USDA Rural Economic Development Loan at the sale, a condition survey of the five-year-old building, the Kansas Healthy Food Initiative award in writing, the Meade County appraiser's classification of the property, and the Rural Development State Office's position on the reduced-fee path.

Model study prepared by MMCG Invest | Michal Mohelsky, J.D., FMVA | October 3, 2026

MMCG concludes that the proposed reopening of Grand Avenue Market in Plains is not feasible as proposed and is feasible as restructured. The proposal fails on debt service, which is exactly how the first operation failed. At a stabilized volume of $2,600,000 and a realized gross margin of 27.0 percent after shrink, the store earns $702,000 of gross margin and spends $641,827 to operate, $392,864 of it on the fourteen-person staff the original store ran, $65,513 on electricity, gas and water for a building whose electricity use, led by refrigeration, runs 43.6 kilowatt-hours per square foot, and $32,773 on Meade County property tax at the 25 percent commercial assessment. That leaves $60,173 of EBITDA, 2.3 percent of sales, and $48,173 after a replacement reserve, which is consistent with the National Grocers Association's 1 to 3 percent net margin for the sector and with the 1 percent that rural independents in communities under 1,000 people report once depreciation and interest are taken. A $1,071,016 guaranteed loan at 8.25 percent over 25 years costs $101,333 a year, and the store covers it at 0.48x in Year 3 and 0.52x in Year 5. The original 2021 capital structure carried an $852,000 zero-interest Rural Economic Development Loan repayable over ten years, about $85,200 a year of principal, together with a $630,458 equipment loan on commercial terms, against a store that generates about $48,000 a year; the half-cent sales tax that voters rejected in November 2023 was the only way that arithmetic closed, and when it failed the store closed thirty months later.

Restructured, the store carries the debt it can: a $380,000 B&I guaranteed loan at $35,953 a year, which is 1.34x covered in Year 3, 1.40x in Year 4 and 1.46x in Year 5, with the remaining $1,023,490 of the $1,403,490 project cost funded by community stock equity on the model Dighton used, a Kansas Healthy Food Initiative award of up to $100,000, and sponsor cash. The $120,000 reserve carries the Year 1 shortfall of $78,548 and the Year 2 shortfall of $31,999, which is the ramp a reopened store runs while it wins back the trips that moved to the Dollar General and to Meade and Liberal during the closure. The guaranteed loan is below the $1,000,000 threshold at which 7 CFR 5001.306(a)(3)(i) requires an independent feasibility study of a new business; the lender requested one because the project reopens a store that failed and because the Agency may require a study at or below that amount where the project significantly affects an existing business, which in a one-store town it does. The determination is conditioned on the disposition of the original equipment and the REDL at the sale, a condition survey of the building, the KHFI award in writing, the Meade County appraiser's classification of the property as commercial or not-for-profit, and the State Office's written position on the reduced-fee path under 7 CFR 5001.454(d).

This is an MMCG model study: a complete feasibility analysis of the reopening of a real, named, closed grocery store in a real rural market, prepared with public data to show USDA guaranteed lenders, community sponsors and state grocery programs how MMCG tests a rural grocery credit against the sector's margin, the trade area's drive distances, the dollar-store competition and the capital structure before a community raises money a second time. It is not a client engagement and MMCG has no relationship with the store's nonprofit owner, Community Enhancement Foundation of Plains, with Pioneer Electric Cooperative, with IFF, with the Kansas Healthy Food Initiative or with any sponsor, lender or buyer; the analysis does not represent an offer, an appraisal or a recommendation to buy the building. Figures drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Kansas Department of Administration, the Kansas Department of Revenue, IFF's published account of the store's financing, KWCH, KSN, High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas Reflector's reporting on the opening and closure, K-State Research and Extension's Rural Grocery Initiative, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Minnesota Extension, the FMS and National Grocers Association financial study as presented at the 2026 Rural Grocery Summit, the Energy Information Administration, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Register are identified as such. Figures labeled MMCG assumption or MMCG estimate are underwriting inputs set by MMCG from industry benchmarks, and items that could not be verified from a primary source at the study date are listed in the Conditions and Limitations section rather than estimated silently. In particular, the store's own sales history, the disposition of its equipment and its REDL balance after closure, the acquisition price, Meade County's mill levy and the property's classification, the Plains serving utility's tariff, the grocery leakage of the trade area and the May 2025 Kansas nonmetropolitan wages were not confirmed from primary sources at the study date and are carried as stated assumptions.

The Project will reopen Grand Avenue Market as a full-line community grocery store owned by a Kansas for-profit corporation whose shares are held by community investors and a local foundation, on the model the Lane County Community Foundation used to open the 8,000 SF Lane County Community Grocery in Dighton on June 27, 2026, with a seven-member board and a hired manager. The physical program comprises the existing 9,300 SF single-story building opened in December 2021 on US-54, with its sales floor laid out in grocery, frozen, dairy, meat, produce, deli and bakery departments, its existing refrigerated and frozen cases, walk-ins, meat room and checkouts refurbished and recommissioned, a service deli and hot case, a small seating area, a receiving dock on the alley side for the wholesaler's twice-weekly truck, and a parking lot on the highway frontage. The store will operate from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Sunday with a general manager, a meat cutter, four full-time clerks and nine part-time clerks and stockers, the staffing plan the original store published. Supply is through a regional wholesaler's full program, with Affiliated Foods of Amarillo, which supplies the Dighton store, as the model, and the wholesaler's weekly ad, pricing zone and retail accounting as the store's systems. The borrower is a new business under 7 CFR 5001.3 because the entity is new and the store has been closed; its principals and the foundation's officers provide the guarantees the program requires. The Project is positioned as the full-line store for Plains, Kismet and the surrounding Meade County trade area, whose alternatives are the store in Meade 15 miles east, the Walmart Supercenter and the grocery stores in Liberal about 25 miles southwest, and the Dollar General in town, and its first task is to win back the trips those alternatives captured between April 2026 and reopening.

Marketing and Sales Strategy

The launch is a community campaign before it is a retail one. The stock offering to community investors is the first marketing, and the store opens with a shareholder base that is also its customer base. Pre-opening, the board runs the community meetings and survey the Kansas Healthy Food Initiative's predevelopment process calls for, publishes the opening date and the hours, and signs the wholesaler. At opening the store runs the wholesaler's weekly ad in the county paper and on social media, a loyalty card tied to the point of sale, a senior discount day for the quarter of residents aged 65 and over, a school and church account program, online ordering with curbside pickup for the ranch and farm trade that drives in once a week, and a local-product section that supports the reduced-fee path's healthy-food criterion. The meat department and the deli are the draw that the Dollar General and the Liberal Walmart's grocery aisle cannot match, and the ad leads with them.

Amenities

The subject is the existing Grand Avenue Market building in Plains, a city of 1,037 at the 2020 Census in Meade County, on US-54 and US-160, the east-west highway that carries traffic between Liberal and Wichita through the town. The store was built from November 2020 and opened in December 2021 as a $2,073,000 project on a site the community assembled, and it is a five-year-old purpose-built grocery building with its utilities, refrigeration infrastructure and parking in place. The acquisition is carried at $700,000, 34 percent of the original cost and $75 per SF, as an MMCG estimate: a purpose-built grocery in a town of 1,000 has no alternative commercial use at anything near its cost, the nonprofit seller's objective is a reopened store rather than a price, and no comparable sale of a closed rural grocery building was found. The price is a disclosed assumption, and the disposition of the REDL balance and of the equipment loan's collateral at the sale, which decide what the seller must clear and whether the refrigeration conveys, are the study's first condition.

Meade County is rural under 7 CFR 5001.3 without a petition: its largest city is Meade, with about 1,500 residents, and the nearest city of more than 50,000 is Amarillo, more than 150 miles away; Liberal, the regional center 25 miles southwest, has about 19,000 residents. The parcel's zoning as commercial was not verified from a city ordinance and is carried as the use the building was built for. The town's position on US-54 gives the store a pass-through customer that a store on a county road would not have, and the study carries that customer in the sales forecast as the margin above the trade area's own capture rather than as a separate line.

The trade area is Plains, Kismet and the western half of Meade County, about 800 households, defined by the drive to the next full-line store rather than by a radius: Meade's store is 15 miles east, and Liberal's Walmart Supercenter and grocery stores are about 25 miles southwest, so a household in Plains or Kismet faces a 30-mile round trip for a full-line basket at the nearest alternative and a 50-mile round trip for the Walmart. Meade County's population is about 4,000 and declining; the county lost population across the last three decennial censuses, which bears on the B&I reduced-fee criterion, and Plains itself fell to 1,037 in 2020. The resident base is older, with about a quarter of residents aged 65 and over on the pattern of the surrounding counties, and the farm and ranch households of the trade area shop weekly and in large baskets.

Grocery spending potential is built from the trade area's households and the Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer expenditure data on food at home, about $6,000 per household a year at the 2024 survey, which puts the trade area's food-at-home potential near $4,800,000 a year; no published grocery leakage study for Meade County was found and the method is disclosed. The study's stabilized sales of $2,600,000 are 54 percent of that potential plus a pass-through and county-wide margin, and the figure is reasoned from the drive distances: a resident facing a 30-mile round trip to the alternative shops locally for the weekly basket and drives for the monthly stock-up, and the store's capture at stabilization is set accordingly. The original store's sales were not published and would be the best evidence; the study conditions its sales basis on the seller's trailing statements if the sale agreement provides them. At $2,600,000 the store sells $280 per SF a year and about $50,000 a week, below the FMS and NGA independent average, which is drawn from larger stores, and consistent with the K-State Rural Grocery Initiative's illustration of a $2,000,000 rural store.

MMCG identified the competing full-line stores by drive distance from Plains and the dollar store in town from business listings.

Competitor Number 1 Full-line grocery, Meade, Kansas The nearest full-line store, 15 miles east on US-54, the alternative the town's residents used during the closure and the store whose weekly ad sets the local price reference. Its sales are not published.

Competitor Number 2 Walmart Supercenter, Liberal, Kansas About 25 miles southwest, the regional stock-up destination for the trade area and the price floor on center-store grocery. The subject does not compete with it on center-store price; it competes on the weekly basket, perishables, meat and the drive.

Competitor Number 3 Grocery stores, Liberal, Kansas The regional center's supermarkets, which together with the Walmart capture the monthly stock-up trip and the trade area's shoppers who work in Liberal.

Competitor Number 4 Dollar General, Plains, Kansas The in-town default for food during the closure. Dollar General operated 21,148 stores at July 31, 2026, opened 321 and closed 66 in the first half of fiscal 2026 and plans about 450 U.S. openings in the year, in a format averaging about 8,500 SF of selling space. The study records the location and the chain's expansion plan and does not apply an unmeasured sales-impact figure from another state; the only measured fact is that the store is there and that it held the town's food trips for six months.

Competitor Number 5 Lane County Community Grocery, Dighton, Kansas (comparable, not a competitor) An 8,000 SF community-owned store 150 miles north that opened June 27, 2026 after a fire destroyed the town's only grocery in January 2024, financed by more than $500,000 of donations and public grants, a Kansas Healthy Food Initiative predevelopment grant and a $15,000 CHS Foundation grant, with shelving and refrigeration bought from a dollar-store liquidation sale and the foundation as sole shareholder. It is the study's model for the community stock structure and the cost evidence that a community can land below the Plains build.

No new grocery store announced, permitted or under construction within the trade area was identified between 2024 and 2026. One in five rural Kansas grocery stores closed between 2008 and 2018, and the state's grocery programs exist because the sector's margin does not carry new debt; the Kansas Healthy Food Initiative has made $5,710,440 of loans and grants to 79 projects in 47 counties since 2018, about $72,000 a project, and in general limits its funding to $100,000 per project.

Meade County's largest city holds about 1,500 residents and the site is outside any urban area contiguous to a city of more than 50,000, so it is rural under 7 CFR 5001.3 without a petition. A grocery store is an eligible commercial enterprise under 7 CFR 5001.105(b)(1), and a community-owned for-profit corporation is an eligible borrower. The borrower is a new business under 5001.3, which sets equity under 5001.105(d) at 20 percent balance sheet equity or 25 percent of project cost for a new business and makes the independent feasibility study a requirement of 5001.306(a)(3)(i) for a guaranteed loan greater than $1,000,000; the restructured loan of $380,000 is below that threshold, the Agency may require a study at or below it under 5001.306(a)(3)(ii) where the project significantly affects an existing business, and the lender has requested one. The restructured capital stack carries 73 percent equity, far above the requirement. At fiscal 2026 terms under 91 FR 11272 the guarantee on a loan under $5,000,000 is 85 percent with a 3 percent initial guarantee fee and a 0.55 percent annual retention fee, and the loan is approved in the Kansas State Office. The 14 jobs are below the 50-job threshold for Department of Labor concurrence. The feasibility study, the appraisal and the lender's fees are eligible uses of loan funds under 5001.121(c)(10).

Under 7 CFR 5001.454(d) a B&I loan may carry a reduced guarantee fee of 1 percent and a reduced annual retention fee of 0.50 percent, at an 80 percent guarantee rather than 85, where the project meets one of the regulation's criteria, two of which the subject may meet: a project located in a rural community that has experienced long-term population decline over the last three decennial censuses, and a project that promotes access to healthy foods while handling locally or regionally produced agricultural food products. Meade County's decline across the 2000, 2010 and 2020 censuses is the first criterion and the study conditions it on the census figures retrieved from census.gov; the store's local beef and produce program is the second.

The trade is $6,650 of upfront fee against $19,000 of additional lender exposure. On a loan this small the study recommends the standard path unless the lender's credit policy prefers the lower fee, and it conditions the determination on the State Office's written position because the healthy-food criterion's language pairs food access with handling locally or regionally produced product and the store's local program must be documented to meet it.

The building is an existing grocery store on a commercial site and the study carries no rezoning or site plan step; the city's zoning of the parcel was not verified and is disclosed. The transfer is the entitlement question. The original project was financed with an $852,000 zero-interest USDA Rural Economic Development Loan awarded in 2017 and passed through Pioneer Electric Cooperative, with a $630,458 equipment loan from IFF closed in November 2020 and a $30,000 Kansas Healthy Food Initiative grant; the REDL's outstanding balance, Pioneer Electric's and USDA's position on a sale, the equipment loan's balance and whether its collateral was liquidated or repossessed at the March 2026 closure are not public, and they decide the seller's net proceeds, whether the refrigeration conveys with the building and whether the acquisition price holds. The study's first condition is the written disposition of both obligations and the equipment, and the purchase agreement should be contingent on it.

Electricity is the store's second-largest operating line. The Energy Information Administration's Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey puts the median electricity intensity of a grocery store or food market at 43.6 kilowatt-hours per square foot, with refrigeration the largest end use at 38 percent of a food sales building's energy, and the Kansas commercial average price in June 2026 was 12.27 cents per kilowatt-hour; at 9,300 SF the store draws about 405,000 kilowatt-hours and $49,752 a year, and the study carries that with $12,000 of gas, water and trash. The serving utility's tariff for Plains was not confirmed and the state average is a disclosed assumption. A Phase I Environmental Site Assessment under ASTM E1527-21 is carried in the closing line and the refrigerant inventory of the existing cases is part of the condition survey. Property tax is carried at $31,500 in Year 1, built from the Kansas Constitution's 25 percent assessment of real property used for commercial purposes, an appraised value equal to the $700,000 acquisition price, and a composite mill levy of 180 mills for the Plains taxing districts, an MMCG estimate: the Lane County districts applicable to a Dighton parcel sum to about 211 mills and Meade County's were not retrieved. The constitution assesses real property owned and operated by a not-for-profit organization at 12 percent, and the Meade County appraiser's classification of a store owned by a for-profit corporation whose shares are held by a foundation is a condition, because the difference is $17,000 a year on a store that earns $48,000.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau; Bureau of Labor Statistics; Energy Information Administration; IFF; KWCH; KSN; HPPR; MMCG estimates.

The trade area supplies the weekly basket; the highway supplies the pass-through margin; and the community's shareholders supply both the capital and the loyalty.

Sales are modeled at $2,600,000 at stabilization in Year 3, ramping from $2,100,000 in Year 1 as the store wins back trips and $2,400,000 in Year 2, and growing 3 percent a year thereafter. The realized gross margin after shrink is modeled at 26.0 percent in Year 1, 26.5 percent in Year 2 and 27.0 percent from Year 3. The figure is built by department from the rural grocery guidance published through the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, which targets gross margins of about 25 percent in center-store grocery, 30 percent in frozen and dairy, 28 to 30 percent in meat, 40 to 45 percent in produce, 40 percent in deli and 55 percent in bakery; blended to a mix of 55 percent center store, 15 percent dairy and frozen, 12 percent meat, 10 percent produce and 8 percent deli and bakery, the department targets reach about 30 percent before shrink, and the FMS and National Grocers Association 2025 financial study's total store shrink of 3.5 percent, concentrated in floral, bakery, produce and deli, brings the realized figure to about 26.5 percent. Weis Markets, a 202-store Mid-Atlantic chain, reported a 25.1 percent gross margin for fiscal 2025 and 26.4 percent in the first quarter of 2026 at an average store of 49,000 SF selling about $501 per SF, which bounds the subject from above on scale and below on margin. The projection then shows what the sector shows: the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's June 2026 summary of National Grocers Association data puts the average grocery margin at 1 to 3 percent with rural independents in communities under 1,000 closer to 1 percent, the University of Minnesota's survey of 129 rural stores found margins just over 1 percent, and K-State's Rural Grocery Initiative illustrates a $2,000,000 store netting $20,000. The subject's 2.3 percent EBITDA before depreciation and interest is that 1 percent world stated before the capital charges, and the study carries it rather than a general retail margin.

Location: Grand Avenue Market, US-54, Plains, KS 67869 Size in SF (Gross): 9,300 (existing building)

Source: Marshall & Swift CoreLogic, MMCG

The study budgets a reopening, not a rebuild. The original store cost $2,073,000 in 2020 to 2021 dollars, about $223 per SF all-in including the $630,458 equipment package, about $68 per SF, and Rider Levett Bucknall's index has risen since; escalated, the same build would cost well above $2,400,000 today, and carrying that figure on a standing five-year-old building would overstate the capital need by more than a million dollars. The base case assumes the refrigeration and fixtures convey with the building and need $120,000 of recommissioning; if the equipment was liquidated or repossessed at the closure, a replacement package at the original cost escalated is about $700,000 and the sensitivity table shows what it does to the structure. Dighton's 8,000 SF store, built after a 2024 fire with refrigeration and shelving bought from a dollar-store liquidation sale and more than $500,000 raised, shows a community can land below the Plains build; its total cost is not public. Opening inventory of $160,000 is about three weeks of cost of goods at stabilization, inside the sector's inventory of about three quarters of monthly sales. The reserve of $120,000 is sized to the Year 1 shortfall of $78,548 and the Year 2 shortfall of $31,999 after debt service with about $9,500 of margin, which is thin, and the study recommends that the community equity be raised with a further $50,000 of contingency. The proposal is carried at $1,428,021 with the same operating budget, a $27,311 guarantee fee and a $10,710 origination fee on a $1,071,016 loan, and $357,005 of equity.

Loan Assumptions (restructured)

The proposal would have carried a $1,071,016 loan and $101,333 of annual debt service against Year 3 cash flow available for debt service of $48,173.

The Project is an eligible commercial enterprise in a rural area under 7 CFR 5001.105 and 5001.3, within the USDA Business and Industry program, and the borrower is an eligible new business. Equity of 73 percent of total project cost exceeds the 25 percent that 5001.105(d) requires of a new business. The guaranteed loan is below the $1,000,000 threshold of 5001.306(a)(3)(i); the lender has requested the study and the lender's credit evaluation must contain a written evaluation of it under 5001.202. The loan is collateralized by the building, the equipment and the inventory, and the personal guarantees of the principals and the corporate guarantee of the foundation are carried under 5001.204. The study presents projected balance sheets, income statements and cash flows through two years of stable operations with a stated assumption list and a pro forma balance sheet at closing under 5001.303, and the lender's global analysis under 5001.315 is written on the store's cash flow alone, with the community equity and any local support carried as sources and never as revenue. The fiscal year 2026 guarantee of 85 percent, the 3 percent initial fee and the 0.55 percent retention fee are carried on the standard path, and the reduced-fee path is presented with the State Office's position as a condition. The loan is approved in the Kansas State Office within the State Director's authority.

Payroll of $381,421 at full staffing covers a manager at $46,500, a meat cutter at $18.00 an hour, four full-time clerks at a blended $15.50 against the Kansas nonmetropolitan stocker mean of $16.44 and cashier median of $12.26, and nine part-time clerks at $13.00 for 1,040 hours each, 21,840 labor hours in all, with a 14 percent burden; at $2,600,000 of sales that is $119 of sales per labor hour against the $117 Midwest figure in a 2022 vendor benchmark, and 15.1 percent of sales, above the 10 percent a supermarket runs because a 9,300 SF store cannot spread a manager and a meat cutter over the volume a 49,000 SF store does. Year 3 operating expenses are 24.7 percent of sales and 91.4 percent of gross margin, which is the arithmetic of the sector. Electricity is the second-largest line and property tax the fourth; the classification question in the Conditions section is worth more than a third of the store's cash flow.

The Year 1 and Year 2 shortfalls of $78,548 and $31,999 are funded from the reserve. The store covers from Year 3 at 1.34x and builds to 1.46x by Year 5 as sales and costs grow together. Year 3 EBITDA of $60,173 is a 4.3 percent yield on total project cost, which is the return a community accepts on a store it owns to keep and no investor accepts on a store it owns to sell. As proposed, the same store against $101,333 of debt service covers at 0.48x in Year 3 and never reaches 1.0x; the proposal needed a sales tax, and the original store's history is what happens when the tax does not pass.

At Year 3 cost ratios the store's fixed operating cost, payroll, utilities, insurance, property tax, repairs, marketing, administration and other, is $582,717 including the replacement reserve, and its variable cost of goods net of margin, supplies, card fees and wholesaler charges is 75.7 percent of sales, so each dollar of sales contributes 24.3 cents. Thresholds are stated as a share of the Year 3 forecast of $2,600,000.

The store breaks even on operations at 92 percent of forecast and covers its restructured debt at 98 percent. That is the shape of a rural grocery credit, and it is why the debt must be small: a store that earns 2.3 cents on the dollar has no room between its operating break-even and its debt break-even, and the lender's protection is the size of the loan, the reserve and the community's equity, not the coverage ratio.

The restructured store holds coverage above 1.25x only at the base case and above, and falls below 1.0x on a 10 percent sales shortfall, a 1-point margin shortfall or a 10 percent payroll overrun. That is not a weakness of the structure; it is the sector's margin, and the structure answers it with a loan small enough that the shortfall in any of those cases is a year's reserve rather than a default. The classification row shows that the county appraiser's decision is worth half a point of coverage. The equipment row shows that the base case's assumption about the refrigeration decides the equity raise, not the loan. The as-proposed row is the determination.

The determination of not feasible as proposed and feasible as restructured is subject to the following conditions precedent on the restructured program:

The following items could not be verified from a primary source at the study date and are disclosed: the store's own sales history, in place of which the study reasons a forecast from the trade area; the acquisition price, in place of which the study carries an estimate against the original cost; the outstanding balances and dispositions of the REDL and the equipment loan; the parcel's zoning; Meade County's composite mill levy and the property's classification, in place of which the study carries 180 mills and the 25 percent commercial assessment; the serving utility's tariff, in place of which the study carries the Kansas commercial average; a published grocery leakage figure for Meade County; the May 2025 Kansas nonmetropolitan wages for cashiers, stockers and meat cutters, in place of which May 2023 and earlier vintages are escalated; the period of the FMS and NGA sales-per-square-foot benchmark; the Dighton store's total cost and sales; and the primary USDA text of any fiscal year 2027 fee notice, which had not been published at the study date.

This model study applies the methodology described on MMCG's grocery store feasibility study and USDA feasibility study pages. MMCG prepares grocery and rural retail feasibility studies for USDA Business and Industry, SBA 7(a) and 504, and conventional and community development lenders nationwide, with engagements from $4,900 and delivery in 9 to 16 business days.