Burger man bites into loan marketplace

A Tampa-area restaurateur recently discovered a solution to the vexing issue of the day that faces many small business owners. It's the one where bankers say they will loan money, but entrepreneurs say they receive a constant stream of rejections.

Mark Van Dame, though, used BoeFly, an online marketplace that connects small business owners with lenders through proprietary matching technology. The BoeFly system, says Van Dame, put him in touch with several lenders nationwide that offered financing. He ultimately settled on HomeBanc, with the institution's Sarasota branch.

The loan allowed Van Dame to accomplish his business goal: He opened the first Jake's Wayback Burgers franchise location in the Tampa area, and the second on the Gulf Coast. He opened the burger joint, known for diner-style comfort food, near FishHawk Ranch in August. (The location also sells the Triple Triple Burger, an impossibly colossal sandwich made with nine patties and nine slices of cheese. It costs $15.) Cheshire, Conn.- based Jake's has another Florida location in Sarasota, in the Westfield Sarasota Square mall.

“When I decided to open my first restaurant franchise,” Van Dame says in a statement, “I knew financing it would be a challenge, and I expected a long and tedious process toward securing a bank loan.”

But Van Dame, with 17 years' experience in senior-level positions in the consumer products industry, was pleasantly surprised at the ease of the BoeFly system. BoeFly, according to a press release, says Jake's Wayback Burgers is one of more than 125 franchise brands that use the matching system to help franchisees find financing.