A first-time café operator needed bank financing. Clariva built a loan-ready, fully-integrated 5-year financial model and an investor-grade business plan, prepared to a lender-ready standard for a CSBFP loan application.
A husband-and-wife team was opening a premium gelato café and needed approval under the Canada Small Business Financing Program (CSBFP). Lenders require more than optimism: a defensible, fully-integrated financial model, a credible business plan, proven debt-service capacity, and assumptions traceable to real sources.
The owners had a strong concept – but no lender-ready numbers. Clariva turned the concept into an institutional-grade financial package.
Source: Clariva 5-year financial model for this engagement; figures anonymized.
EBITDA margin expands from 17.8% to 30.9% on operating leverage; revenue grows at a conservative 12% CAGR, well inside the $400K–$700K independent-shop benchmark. The growth line is where that margin story is visible rather than asserted: after the opening ramp the top line settles at low single digits, while EBITDA keeps climbing from 137 to 162. A single-location café is modelled to fill up and then hold, not to compound.
Every dollar of revenue and cost traces to a real operating assumption – transactions, price, attach rates, shifts – so the model flexes with reality.
Inflation, tax and cost-of-capital inputs cited from the Bank of Canada, IMF, OECD, Damodaran and Kroll – auditable, not invented.
The balance sheet balances in every month, cash roll-forward ties out, and tax reconciles – the checks a credit officer looks for first.
A bank edition focused on DSCR, repayment and cash flow; a full investor edition with valuation – same engine, right lens for each reader.
See the standard for yourself. An abridged edition of the bank-ready business plan this case produced, free to read – the methodology, the projections and the coverage tests in full, the lender's terms masked, the parts left out named on the page. (PDF, 20 pages)
Download the sample planWe put this café through the September 8 tariffs. The input that should have hurt costs nothing; the whole bill turned out to be packaging. Search the list against your own purchases in the free tool – the worked example inside is an auto shop whose loan covenant does not survive the duty.
Open the tariff checkWhether you're raising debt, courting investors, or just want to run on real numbers – Clariva builds the financial model and plan that gets you a yes.
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