convenience store funding — mellow

mellow is not a lender and does not underwrite or approve anything itself. we review your details and work to connect you with funding providers who serve your category. terms and approval come from the provider, subject to underwriting.

know the business type, state, time in business, monthly business-bank-deposit range, requested amount, exact use, existing advances or loan payments, and timeline. use actual operating deposits rather than projected sales.

possible structures include bank or credit-union products, lines of credit, term products, equipment or inventory financing, and revenue-based financing. eligibility, cost, collateral, guarantees, repayment, and disclosures vary. a category list is not evidence that a product is available.

no. the public inquiry is not a secure document channel. do not submit bank statements, identification, tax records, account credentials, ownership documents, or supplier records unless an appropriate counterparty and secure process have first been verified.

compare the amount received, total payback, payment amount and frequency, term or estimated duration, reconciliation rights, collateral or receivables involved, personal guarantees, prepayment and default provisions, broker compensation, and required state disclosures.

no — nothing is approved until a provider underwrites your file. what you qualify for depends on your deposits, time in business, existing obligations, product mix, and state. the inquiry is how we find out which providers fit.

sometimes, but credit is part of the decision rather than an irrelevance. revenue-based providers generally weigh business-bank deposits, deposit consistency, negative days, and existing obligations more heavily than a personal credit score, and most still pull credit and hold a floor of their own. for convenience stores a second screen usually matters as much: whether the provider accepts tobacco, fuel, and lottery exposure at all. a low score narrows the list and can affect the amount, the term, and the cost. bank, credit-union, and SBA-backed products hold tighter credit standards than revenue-based financing. mellow does not review credit or issue decisions; a provider does, subject to its own underwriting.

no one can answer that honestly before a provider underwrites the business. revenue-based providers commonly size an offer from average monthly business-bank deposits over a recent period, then reduce it for existing advances, negative days, and irregular patterns. convenience stores need one extra step: pass-through flows. lottery settlement sweeps, ATM vault replenishment, and in some structures fuel settlement can inflate or distort deposit totals, and a provider that nets them out will reach a different number than one that does not. know your monthly deposit range, your inside-sales figure separate from fuel, your existing payments, and the exact amount and purpose before you apply anywhere.

not always, but time in business is an early screen. many revenue-based providers look for at least 3 to 6 months of operating history and business-bank statements. bank, credit-union, and SBA-backed products usually want 2 years or more. convenience stores hit a specific wrinkle here: buying an existing store often means a new entity and a new bank account, so a site that has operated for 30 years may screen as a few months old because the screen runs on the legal entity and the account rather than the sign on the building. if you recently bought a store, expect to be treated as newer than the location is, and expect deposit history to matter more than the seller's numbers.

expect it to affect the outcome, because recent deposits are what providers read. a visible drop in the trailing months narrows the list and reduces the amount even when the cause is external. what helps is documentable context: when the flavored tobacco restriction took effect, when the department of transportation closed the turn lane, what the store did in response, and what deposits have done since the low point. a store that can show the line flattening or recovering presents a different file than one still sliding. none of that decides the outcome — it changes what an underwriter is reading, and an unexplained crater reads worse than a dated one.

revenue-based providers often decide within 1 to 3 business days of a complete file; bank and credit-union products commonly take weeks. the file drives the pace more than the category does. missing statement pages, unexplained large deposits, an undisclosed advance, a lapsed tobacco or lottery license, or an application that does not match the bank record all add days. treat any timeline as an estimate rather than a commitment, since funding is subject to underwriting and mellow does not control provider timing. if a fuel drop, a distributor cutoff, or a dated price increase is driving the request, say so at the start so the alternatives — including supplier terms and a smaller amount — can be compared honestly.

from a bank, sometimes — a store with real estate, two years of tax returns, and no tobacco concentration can get there, and SBA-backed financing does reach fuel and convenience sites. what stops most single-store operators is time and category. the file takes weeks, the store needs a fuel drop on thursday, and plenty of banks screen tobacco and lottery exposure at intake. what specialty funders offer instead is an advance against future receivables, underwritten from your last 3 months of business bank statements rather than collateral, with decisions typically in 24-72 hours and funded amounts of $10K to $500K, subject to underwriting.

not the way you might hope, and this is the single most common misread on a c-store file. lottery ticket sales run through your account gross and then get swept by the state on the settlement calendar, so a naive read of your deposits can overstate the business badly. ATM vault cash cycles the same way. underwriters who know convenience retail net those flows out before they size anything. underwriters who do not know the vertical sometimes decline the file as unexplained churn. we label the settlement lines and the vault replenishments in the submission so the number a funder sizes from is your actual merchandise and fuel volume.

correctly, if you send the file to funders who work this category. fuel produces large deposits and thin margin, and a funder sizing an offer off gross deposits without adjusting for it will either come back with a number that flatters you or one that ignores you. the number that carries weight is inside sales — merchandise and foodservice — because that is where the gross profit lives. a store with modest gallons and a strong foodservice program often underwrites better than a high-volume fuel site with a bare interior. we present both sides so the offer is sized against what actually services a payment.

typically 24-72 hours from a complete file to money in the account, subject to underwriting and verification. a complete file is your last 3 months of business bank statements, a one-page application, and your ID. what slows convenience store files specifically: statements that mix fuel settlement, lottery sweeps, and ATM loads without explanation, a tobacco or lottery license that has lapsed, or an undisclosed advance showing up in review instead of in the cover note. tell us the mess on day one. a disclosed problem is underwriting; a discovered one is a decline.

before, if the store carries a hemp set. funders underwrite on your trailing 3 months of deposits, so applying while the category is still selling produces a stronger file than applying after the gap appears. the federal effective date is november 12, 2026. a senate stopgap passed august 8, 2026 would push most restrictions to december 11, 2026, but the house has not acted and it is not law — planning against a delay that may never arrive is how stores end up carrying inventory they cannot lawfully sell.

funded amounts in the specialty funder network run $10K to $500K, and most single-store convenience deals land between $30,000 and $150,000. the driver is monthly deposit volume and consistency, adjusted down for existing positions, negative days, and the pass-through flows discussed above. a store with steady daily card settlements, regular cash deposits, and a clean account supports meaningfully more than a store with the same annual sales that keeps register cash out of the bank. offers are sized from statements, not from the drawer.

often, yes. some specialty funders write second and third positions, and a smaller group goes further, subject to underwriting. the question is arithmetic, not category. add your current daily or weekly payments to what a new one would add, then check whether the store still covers a fuel drop, payroll, and the lottery sweep in a slow week. if the combined payment pushes the account toward negative days, another position makes the problem worse and we will say so instead of placing it.

yes, and it is fixable. convenience stores run more cash than most retail, and cash that never reaches the bank is invisible to an underwriter — offers are built from deposits. stores that deposit register cash on a consistent schedule for even 60 days before applying usually see a materially different number than stores that deposit in irregular lumps. this is the cheapest thing an owner can do to improve a file, and it costs nothing but discipline.

cost varies by funder, by file strength, and by position, so we do not publish rates, and you should be skeptical of anyone who quotes one before seeing your statements. what you can count on: the full payback amount and the payment schedule appear in writing before you sign, and several states now require standardized cost disclosure documents with any offer. we put the total payback in dollars next to the amount you receive and map the payment against your slow-week cash flow before you decide.

yes. specialty funders place working capital into convenience stores and fuel retailers in every state. state law shapes what you can sell — flavored tobacco restrictions, single-serve alcohol rules, hemp bans that already run ahead of the federal date — but it does not decide whether you can be funded. what varies by state is mostly disclosure paperwork, and where standardized disclosures are required they work in your favor.