Tempe Business Broker

Tempe is one of the most economically dense cities in Arizona, packing 7,232 business establishments and 218,102 employees with $15.7 billion in annual payroll into approximately 40 square miles. The city's 2024 population of 190,114 (city-data) is dominated by Arizona State University, which enrolled 79,818 students at its Tempe campus in academic year 2024–2025 — the largest public university by enrollment in the United States. ASU's presence reshapes Tempe's economy in ways that directly affect the business-for-sale market: the largest employment sector among Tempe residents is Educational Services (15,615 employees), followed by Retail Trade (11,899) and Health Care and Social Assistance (11,335). For business sellers, Tempe is one of the highest-traffic submarkets in the Valley because of two distinct buyer flows. The first is student-driven volume: roughly 65,000 undergraduates and 14,000 graduate students drive consistent traffic to bars, restaurants, fitness concepts, and lifestyle retail along Mill Avenue, the McClintock corridor, and the ASU Research Park. The second is corporate flow: Tempe Town Lake and the surrounding Marina Heights and Watermark developments host major corporate offices for State Farm, Carvana, ADP, and others, supporting a B2B services market and lunch/dinner-driven hospitality with strong daytime demand. The city's position at the crossroads of I-10, US-60, and the Loop 202 also makes it a logistics-favorable location for service businesses serving the broader Valley. Notable for restaurant and bar transactions, the ASU corridor and Mill Avenue have one of the highest densities of Series 6 (Bar) and Series 12 (Restaurant) liquor licenses in Arizona. Liquor license fair-market value can be a meaningful component of enterprise value, particularly for bar concepts where SDE may be modest relative to license scarcity. The Tempe market also sees consistent franchise resale activity given the proximity to ASU's student housing footprint and corporate office traffic. BizSalesGuy serves Tempe across all submarkets, with deep familiarity in restaurant and bar transactions where liquor license valuation, lease assignment to chain operators or independent buyers, and ASU-traffic seasonality all factor into deal structure and price. Valuations apply SDE multiples (typically 2x for restaurants and bars, 2.5–4x for service businesses) with three-year weighted-average earnings.