Build the StockX for $43B Restaurant Equipment Market

Here's the background: Red Lobster shuts 100+ locations. TAGeX, a liquidator, bills it as the "largest restaurant liquidation ever." Now multiply that by 21 bankruptcies in 2024 alone—TGI Fridays, Boston Market, Rubio's—plus hundreds more closures from Denny's (150 by end of 2025), Wendy's (140 underperformers), and Applebee's (35 net closures). That's mountains of commercial kitchen gear hitting the secondary market. (Restaurant Business Online)

Meanwhile, some ex-Goldman Sachs analyst just quit to sell Pokemon cards for $40K a month using a bid/ask system she built. Her YC-backed startup Misprint treats trading cards like stocks—transparent pricing, instant liquidity, real-time market data. (Y Combinator)

Now dial up your imagination and connect the dots. The used restaurant equipment market hit $24.47 billion in 2024. It's growing 5.25% annually toward $43 billion by 2035. Yet it still trades like a 1970s flea market—Craigslist photos, trust-me-bro pricing, three-week negotiation cycles. (Market Research Future)

Here's the play: Build the stock exchange for commercial kitchen gear. Real-time bid/ask. Condition grading like PSA for baseball cards. Instant liquidity through float-funded buyouts. Start with the heavy iron that swings thousands on condition—combi ovens, espresso machines, walk-ins. Own the pricing tape. Become the NASDAQ for spatulas.

(Note: Market size estimates vary widely. TAGeX themselves estimate $5-6B for pure resale. Conservative trackers say $6-9B. We're using the broader $24B definition that includes all secondary equipment transactions.)

Why This. Why Now.

Three forces just collided:

1. The Great Restaurant Shakeout of 2024-25
Neal Sherman, CEO of TAGeX, handled 400 closures last year. He calls it "the ultimate shakeout" after 38 years in business. Twenty-one chains filed Chapter 11 in 2024—the most since COVID. Restaurant traffic stayed flat while costs soared. The liquidation pipeline? Overflowing. (CNBC)

2. AI Makes Messy Markets Tradeable
Y Combinator's W25 batch proved the formula. Misprint uses ML to normalize Pokemon card pricing. Retrofit's AI agents turn 100,000 chaotic vintage listings into curated inventory. The tech stack—computer vision for grading, NLP for spec normalization, pricing algorithms—now costs pennies. What worked for $3.5B in Pokemon cards works for $26B in restaurant gear. (TechCrunch)

3. Buyers Want Speed, Not Haggling
Cloud kitchens exploded post-COVID. Food halls need equipment yesterday. That new taco truck? They'd pay 10% premium to skip the three-week Craigslist dance. Speed beats price when you're bleeding $5K daily in missed revenue.