Where to Buy a Business in Louisiana
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
14,273
1.4% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
310.4
#26 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
321
$375M since FY2020, 71 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Deal
$813k
FY2020 through FY2025
Louisiana holds 14,273 businesses a searcher could realistically buy across the trades this site covers: establishments with 5 to 99 employees, big enough to have something to sell, small enough to finance. That is 1.4% of the country's buyable market and ranks Louisiana #26 among the states. The number that decides a search, though, is not the state total but where inside the state those businesses sit.
The Deepest Counties in Louisiana
Nobody searches Louisiana. They search a metro they can drive across to meet an owner. These are the counties with the most buyable targets in the covered trades, East Baton Rouge Parish deepest among them.
| East Baton Rouge Parish | 1,609 | 11.3% |
| Jefferson Parish | 1,522 | 10.7% |
| Orleans Parish | 1,259 | 8.8% |
| Lafayette Parish | 1,016 | 7.1% |
| St. Tammany Parish | 940 | 6.6% |
| Caddo Parish | 753 | 5.3% |
| Calcasieu Parish | 616 | 4.3% |
| Ouachita Parish | 540 | 3.8% |
| Rapides Parish | 407 | 2.9% |
| Tangipahoa Parish | 368 | 2.6% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Louisiana
- Limited-Service Restaurants2,897 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants2,318 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores1,129 buyable
- Offices of Dentists1,046 buyable
- Child Day Care Services799 buyable
- Insurance Agencies and Brokerages745 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Louisiana's SBA acquisition-lending profile. The same counts industry by industry across every state are in Where the Businesses Are, and several of these trades restrict who can own at all: the Ownership & License Rules table names which.
Next Door to Louisiana
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Louisiana touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 29 trades.
- Arkansas9,455 buyable
- Mississippi8,710 buyable
- Texas87,112 buyable
Method & Source
Buyable counts are establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 29 covered trades, summed from the Census County Business Patterns (2023). A county total is a lower bound: Census suppresses cells thin enough to identify a single business, and a trade we have not written a guide for is not counted. SBA figures are change-of-ownership 7(a) approvals (FY2020 through FY2025), approvals rather than closings.