About Jason Taken, Business Broker at HedgeStone Business Advisors
Jason Taken is a business broker with HedgeStone Business Advisors, working nationwide with a background in finance and lending. This site is his laundromat practice: representing owners selling coin laundries, representing buyers acquiring them, and publishing the sourced valuation, financing, and market data the work is built on.
Key takeaways
- Business broker with HedgeStone Business Advisors, working nationwide across small-business verticals, with a background in finance and lending.
- This site is a dedicated laundromat practice, because coin and card revenue verification, utility analysis, equipment life, and lease infrastructure clauses do not survive a generalist process.
- Contact is direct: jason.taken@hedgestone.com, and one calendar link. No forms, no gatekeeping, no drip sequence.
- Every number published on this site carries a source and a year, and where no credible source exists, the page says so.
The Practice
Two kinds of engagement.
Sell-side. An owner wants out — retirement, burnout, relocation, portfolio rebalancing, or an unsolicited offer they want tested. The work is pricing the store from evidence, assembling the package a buyer and lender will demand, marketing it without anyone local finding out, qualifying buyers before disclosure, and holding the transaction together through diligence, financing, and landlord consent.
Buy-side. Someone wants to own a laundromat, or a second one, or a group of them. The work is defining a buybox that is actually financeable, sourcing on-market and off-market, screening fast, verifying revenue rather than accepting it, getting the buyer lender-ready before an offer, and structuring contingencies that let them walk if the numbers do not hold.
Both sides share one commitment: numbers get verified, not repeated.
Why a Site Full of Data Instead of Claims?
Most broker sites make claims about the broker. This one publishes the data the broker works from.
That is a deliberate choice, and there are two reasons for it.
First, it is more useful. An owner wondering what their store is worth needs the closed-sale distribution, the normalization method, and the drivers — not a testimonial. A first-time buyer needs the actual SBA equity-injection rule with its effective date, not a paragraph saying financing is available.
Second, it is checkable. Every statistic here carries its source and its year. Where a number is a trade-survey median it says so. Where it is a program maximum, not a quoted rate it says so. Where no credible number exists — the "laundromat failure rate" being the clearest case — the page says so instead of inventing one. You can verify any of it, and you should.
The practical consequence is that some pages on this site will talk you out of a deal. A store with a five-year lease and undocumented cash is not a good purchase at any price a seller will accept, and saying that plainly is worth more than another page of enthusiasm.
What a Finance Background Changes
Coming to brokerage from finance and lending changes what gets attention first.
A deal that cannot be financed is not a deal. So the credit file gets built early rather than late: which lenders actually do laundromat acquisitions, what they will discount, whether the buyer's post-closing liquidity survives underwriting, whether the lease term covers the loan term, whether add-backs have source documents, and whether an independent business valuation will land where the price does.
The alternative — market the store, take an offer, and discover in week eight that no lender will fund it — is common and expensive for everyone involved.
The Two Engagement Types
| Sell-side | Buy-side | |
|---|---|---|
| Who calls | An owner exploring an exit, testing an unsolicited offer, or planning 12-36 months out | An individual or group buying a first, second, or fifth store |
| First deliverable | A value range built from closed-sale evidence and your actual documents | A buybox that is financeable given your real post-closing liquidity |
| Core work | Pricing, document package, confidential marketing, buyer qualification, diligence management, landlord consent | Sourcing on- and off-market, four-gate screening, revenue verification, lender readiness, contingency structure |
| What gets refused | A store that should spend six months on documentation first, priced as if it already had | A store whose revenue cannot be documented or whose lease expires before the loan |
| Fee | Negotiated in a written engagement agreement before any marketing begins | Negotiated in writing before a search begins |
| Cost to start | Nothing. The intro call carries no agreement. | Nothing. Same call, different questions. |
Both engagements begin the same way and neither begins with a signature. The first conversation is diagnostic: what do you have, what do you want, and is there a workable path between them.
What This Site Will Never Do
- Publish fabricated listings. There is no inventory here. Store details are never posted publicly, and a seller's identity stays confidential until a qualified buyer signs an NDA.
- Publish invented testimonials or client names. Confidentiality is the product on the sell side. Clients do not get used as marketing.
- Guarantee a price, a timeline, or a financing approval. Nobody can, and a broker who does is telling you something useful about themselves.
- Give legal or tax advice. Allocation, bulk-sale notice, sales tax on equipment, non-compete enforceability, and depreciation treatment turn on facts and current law. That is what your CPA and attorney are for, and the pages here say so where it matters.
- Cite a source that was not actually retrieved. Every source list on this site is a list of documents that were read.
What This Practice Will Not Do
Worth stating plainly, because the omissions describe the approach better than the claims do.
No published figure without a source. Every number on this site carries an inline citation and a page-level source list. Where no authoritative figure exists — machine costs, insurance premiums, permit fees, time to profitability — the page says so and shows how to obtain a real local number instead of inventing a national one. There are more of those pages than is comfortable, and that is the point.
No fabricated listings, testimonials or client names. Nothing on this site presents invented transactions or invented people as real.
No guarantees about price, timing or financing. A store is worth what a buyer will pay, a sale takes as long as the landlord and the lender take, and approval is the lender's decision. Anyone promising otherwise is describing something they do not control.
No legal or tax advice. Structure, allocation, entity questions and state-specific obligations belong with your own attorney and CPA. Several pages here say so more than once, because those are the questions where general guidance is genuinely dangerous.
No claim of licensure anywhere it does not exist. State pages describe what a state requires factually. They do not assert that this practice is licensed in that state.
What a Finance Background Changes
Mostly it changes what gets checked before an opinion is offered.
A valuation is arithmetic performed on inputs, and the inputs are where the errors are. Normalising earnings from filed returns, not from a summary somebody prepared. Striking add-backs that lack a source document, because a lender and an appraiser will strike them anyway and it is better to find out first. Deducting the market cost of the owner's own labour, which is the omission that most often separates a seller's expectation from a buyer's offer. Pricing near-term equipment replacement as a dated schedule rather than treating it as a general concern.
None of that is unique to this practice — it is what a careful buyer's accountant does. Doing it before marketing rather than during diligence is what changes the outcome, because a number that survives scrutiny is worth more than a higher one that does not.
Why a Site of Data Rather Than Claims
Because in a category this opaque, the useful thing to offer is the working, not the conclusion.
A laundromat's value turns on numbers most owners have never been shown: what the closed-sale distribution actually looks like, what utilities run at as a share of revenue, how many controllable lease years a financed buyer needs, and how a struck add-back multiplies into the price. Those are knowable. They are also rarely published with sources attached, which leaves owners to price from anecdote and buyers to price from caution.
So this site publishes the method and the sources instead of assurances. Every figure carries a citation. Where a figure does not exist, the page says so rather than estimating — and there are more of those than is comfortable, because a great deal of what circulates about this industry is somebody's marketing repeated until it sounded like data.
The practical consequence is that you can check the work. An owner can run the valuation method on their own store, reach their own number, and see exactly which inputs would move it. A buyer can run the verification methods and know whether the revenue is real. Neither requires taking anyone's word for anything, which is the point.
The Two Engagement Types
Sell-side. Preparing a store for sale and running the process: normalising the earnings from filed returns, assembling the document package, pricing from the closed-sale distribution with the capital programme deducted, marketing blind, qualifying buyers before disclosure, managing diligence from documents, and starting landlord consent early because it runs on the landlord's clock rather than yours.
Buy-side. Working for a buyer, not a seller: screening stores on the four gates that cannot be fixed by a good operator, verifying revenue across independent sources, converting the equipment position into a dated schedule, reading the lease before the offer rather than during diligence, and pricing what the findings actually justify.
The two are not run simultaneously on the same transaction, for the obvious reason.
What both have in common is the order of work. The evidence comes first, the number follows from it, and the negotiation happens on a position that survives somebody else's scrutiny — because on any financed deal, a lender's underwriter and often an independent appraiser will reach their own conclusions from the same documents. A price that only works if nobody checks is not a price.
Contact
Direct, and there is only one action on this site.
Jason Taken · jason.taken@hedgestone.com · HedgeStone Business Advisors
The intro call is 30 minutes, costs nothing, and carries no agreement. Sellers: bring two years of returns and the lease. Buyers: bring your capital, your target markets, and your timeline. If you have a specific store in hand, send the listing, the P&L, and the lease first and the call gets far more useful.
The Next Step
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Jason Taken?
Jason Taken is a business broker with HedgeStone Business Advisors, working nationwide across a range of small-business verticals with a background in finance and lending. On this site he represents laundromat sellers and laundromat buyers, and publishes the sourced data the practice works from.
What is HedgeStone Business Advisors?
HedgeStone Business Advisors is the business brokerage firm Jason Taken works with. It represents owners selling small and lower-middle-market businesses and buyers acquiring them, across a range of industries and nationwide.
Are you licensed in my state?
Licensing for business brokerage depends on the state and on what the transaction includes. Several states require a real-estate license to broker a business sale, and requirements change when real property, a lease, a seller note, or an equity interest is part of the deal. The applicable requirement is confirmed for your specific transaction before an engagement is accepted, rather than assumed.
Do you work only on laundromats?
This site is specifically a laundromat practice. HedgeStone's broader work covers many verticals. The reason for a dedicated laundromat site is that the mechanics that decide these deals — coin and card revenue verification, water and sewer analysis, equipment remaining life, lease infrastructure clauses — are specific enough that a generalist process misses them.
Is there an office near me?
No. This is a nationwide practice with no physical office in each market. The state and metro pages on this site describe the market and the rules that apply there; they do not claim a local storefront. Most of the work happens by phone, video, and document review, with site visits scheduled as the deal requires.
This page is general information about laundromat transactions, not legal, tax, or investment advice, and not a guarantee of sale price, timing, or financing approval. Verify current rules with your own CPA, attorney, lender, and the relevant state or municipal agency before acting.