[Vt71fcAqt7]

>Of course it can be sold. To someone else who wants to run a mom-and-pop operation.

It's a small market of people who are just rich enough to buy that business, don't have another job already and don't mind working that business. And that market is already filled pretty well by franchises. It's not impossible to sell the business obviously but if they were only making eg. 100k a year there is really no market for buyers for that because if you need to take out a big loan to buy it you might make nothing and if you can afford it you have better options. It's more common in these cases from my anecdotal experience, especially for something like a restaurant, that whoever buys it will restart the business completely with a new sign, menu, ect. after the last one shuts down. This is especially true in big cities where the owners usually lease the shop. What do they really have? Why would I buy a sign and menu from them for x hundred thousand dollars if I have another option?