Entrepreneur

So long story as short as possible, hopefully without missing important points.

I am a bartender/business owner from a small country in Europe, to put things into perspective.

I have owned and operated my own business since 2017. It’s a cocktail catering company that started with just me and later my two friends joined. Our shares were me, 40% and them 30% each.

During Covid the catering company wasn’t very active obviously so I started a new business teaching people how to make cocktails online, it went viral where I live so after Covid I started hosting cocktail-making classes in person for amateurs. Fast forward two years and my cocktail classes were so big that me and my wife bought a venue, started an online store with cocktail-related products, and opened a beautiful venue in the heart of our city to host our classes. We are now usually sold out 4-6 weeks in advance,

The online store now generates around 90k a year and we also started a new wine tasting class that is blowing up. The best-selling item in the online store is gift certificates for one of our courses but we also sell cocktail sets, glasses, liqueres, and a ton of other things.

In 2023 I bought most of my two friends' shares in the catering company so we decided to combine both companies into one and move into the same venue together so now me and my wife own 84% of the total so to make this easier it is now a:

Wine tasting room

Cocktail making classroom

Largest bar related online store in the country

Catering company

Event venue for weddings, meetings and other things.

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Now to the fun part, numbers!

In 2022 we did 800k in sales in between the companies with a 40k EBITDA. The reason is we bought and renovated our venue, bought a new large van for the catering company, a new ice machine, a walk-in freezer, washing machines, etc. and the biggest issue with 2022 was consistency. We were extremely busy for a month and then slow for a month all year so every slow month we burned through most of our cash.

In 2023 we are surpassing 1m in sales with a 100k expected EBITDA after the Christmas madness. We don’t need to buy anything else and we have amazing staff that help us grow every month. We also have a very big social media presence and I wrote a best-selling recipe book that helped our brands get better local recognition. We are now also much more consistent so every single week we have around 4-8 events in between the brands.

A very big fish in the food industry in my country has been looking at our business for some time now and they reached out saying they are interested in buying 40% of our business. They consider us to be the best in our field and they want to give us ALL of their cocktail-related requests. This company generates an EBITDA of 3-4m every single year so they are huge by my country's standards! They also own the biggest event venue in the country and parts of many other food businesses. They are very nice people who have been in the game for more than 60 years and are very well-known and respected. Especially for high-quality food and for investing in smaller brands like mine.

They say that they will 2-3x our sales within a year and I believe them. But on the other hand, I believe that I’m going to get there myself in a few years anyway. They gave us a total valuation of 250k which in my opinion is absurd! So they want to buy 40% of my company for 100k. That means 78k after income tax.

They also want to 1.75x my and my wife's salary but I don’t care about that. Who here is focused on their salary anyway? We are around 30 years old, we have plenty of time left in the game.

My wife thinks we should just go for it but I don’t think so. We have a kid now so I guess that she wants more security and stability which is understandable but I just can’t sell such a big part of everything I’ve worked so hard for, for 78k? We are at the point now where we can live very comfortably, we can travel, we can buy most things that we want and nobody tells us what to do and when to do it.

On one hand, being part of such a huge business means more stability, better salary, bigger events, higher valuation, more money, and more work and we would still hold 60% so we can still operate it however we want.

On the other hand, it means losing our freedom, we have to report to them everything that happens and we have to attend meetings with them explaining why we did X and not Z and we are losing 40% of all future income (forever) for a lousy 78k… Not even a downpayment on a shitty apartment where I live. Not that we need another apartment, I'm just saying...

I just needed to write things down as I’m confused and this seems to be the best place to get some feedback from level-headed people!

Thank you for reading if you managed to read through the whole thing, as you might have guessed already english is not my native language hehe.All the best!

Edit: I forgot to mention that we just signed a 100k deal with the largest high-end supermarket in our country. We are going to produce a line of cocktail mixers, syrups, and other stuff and sell at their stores, starting next March so we have opened up yet another income stream from there...