Last week, I read an article about a nineteen year old who used one email address and an Excel spreadsheet to get free food every day of the year. He gave a different birthday to every restaurant that he could find that would give free food for your birthday, and then used his spreadsheet to see where he was eating that day. Right or wrong, it reminded me a handful of acquisitions we did about 7-8 years ago in the Southeast for a few different owners.

The common thread to these acquisitions was that they were all purchased from one small developer. Since they were strong, grocery anchored centers, the institutions loved them. We are doing the first acquisition and everything is as expected. And, then I start abstracting a Chinese restaurant lease. The final negotiated clause added to the lease was that the developer was entitled to one free lunch special, once a week, with a drink. Seriously, negotiated into the lease! Geek that I am, I estimate the cost of the special and a drink at $8, then do the math for 52 weeks ($416) and then apply a cap rate to it (I think at the time, the center was going to have traded in the low 7s), so it was worth about $5k! Pretty funny and creative. We move on from that acquisition.

A few months later, another institution, same seller/developer. AND ANOTHER LOCAL RESTAURANT WHERE THE DEVELOPER HAD NEGOTIATED THE SAME DEAL!!!! About a year later, we found one more for another buyer.

This local developer had at least three of his weekly lunches covered! No doubt there were more.

You never know what you’ll find in a lease.