Debra Scribner
Title: Partner, Posternak Blankstein & Lund LLP
Age: 51
Experience: 17 years
Originally from Las Vegas, Debra Scribner relocated to the East Coast for college, eventually landing in Boston. She wound up getting into lending work after some time at a general practice firm. After a hiatus as a stay-at-home mom, Scribner jumped back into the lending world, and this year she joined Posternak as a partner in the firm’s corporate and business counseling groups, where she specializes in financing restaurant franchises.
Q: It seems the story about credit availability changes if you’re talking to a bank versus a business looking for credit. The banks say they want to lend; the businesses say nobody’s lending. What’s your perception?
A: I would say that if you’re a franchise owner and you are established and working in a space that is a well-known brand, everyone’s going to try to give you money.
If you’re not so well-established, it’s true: The banks are not making loans, so you look to other types of lenders. That said, because it’s becoming so competitive with banks, I’m finding that these banks are looking at concepts they might not have last year. If you walk down the street, you see some very well-known brands, and then you might see a new restaurant that’s opened up that you’d never noticed before that’s a new concept. Banks traditionally haven’t wanted to lend to that, but they’re willing to look at that more. They’re willing to look at operators with fewer units, too.
Q: What’s the significance of that?
A: It used to be, you could retire and open up one little franchise. Now, the franchisors don’t want the one-store location, they want someone who’s going to come in and take on 20 or 30 stores. The operations are getting bigger and bigger. It’s all consolidating. That’s what banks want: the big and established operators. And non-regulated institutions and private money can come in and fund the smaller people.
Traditionally, there have been just a few banks in this space, but more and more banks are getting into this space because it’s growing. Why not? You need to make loans. But because they’re not as familiar with franchise lending, they want to stay with certain brands because they’re safer. The institutions that have been in this space longer feel more comfortable with franchise lending, so they are willing to maybe drill down into a lesser known brand.
Q: So are you working mainly with lenders or with franchise owners in this role?
A: I represent both, mostly on the lending side, but I do represent some franchise owners, so I get to see both sides: both the struggle in finding credit and the struggles in having someone to take credit. My role is really to facilitate on both ends – though obviously not on the same transaction.
It’s very interesting, as an aside, you see a lot of franchises – Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonald’s, Chipotle – you see those all over the place, but if you go to other parts of the country, you realize how underserved this market is. It is unbelievable how many different restaurant franchises are out there, and there are so many different concepts that aren’t even here. Some restaurant concepts are national, but some really depend on a region or have a regional following, and they don’t translate well to other areas.
When you’re building a franchise, it’s hard to know whether what you have is going to be universal or whether it’s just a particular region or niche. Every other place has a burger concept … You wonder when it’s going to become saturated, because how many burgers can you eat in a week?
Debra Scribner’s Top Five Sights To See:
- The Northern Lights, in either Canada or Scandinavia
- The Great Pyramids
- Machu Picchu
- The Alps
- The Great Barrier Ree
