State of Main Street Ownership — Q4 2026
DealFlow OS · Data as of November 6, 2026
Key findings
Main Street is still owner-run: 91% of the 11.5 million classified US businesses DealFlow OS tracks carry no chain or franchise brand, and in the trades that number is 98–99%.
- 13.6 million operating businesses across the 50 states and DC; 11.5 million (84%) map to one of 390 industries.
- 91% are independent (no brand in the listing). HVAC is 98.6% independent, electrical 99.3%, septic 99.7%. Restaurants (78.8%) and pharmacies (80.0%) are where chains concentrate.
- Almost all are reachable: 95% list a phone number and 83% a website.
- Owners can be emailed directly at 14–25% of businesses in the trades DealFlow OS has crawled so far: insurance 24.9%, roofing 19.3%, HVAC 15.5%.
- They are small: 66% of PPP-matched businesses reported fewer than 10 jobs. About half of HVAC and plumbing businesses reported 5–19 jobs.
- Three states hold more than a quarter of the market: California (1.31M), Texas (1.05M) and Florida (0.92M) together hold 3.28M of the 11.5M classified businesses, 28.6%.
- Houston is the deepest city for buyers: #1 for auto repair (2,929) and insurance (2,903), #2 for dental, hair salons and restaurants.
Counts describe businesses that exist, not businesses listed for sale.
The universe
Restaurants (568K), real estate (519K) and hair salons (447K) are the three largest industries; the top 15 below hold 3.56 million businesses, 31% of everything classified.
| Industry | Businesses | With website | With phone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant | 568,105 | 86% | 93% |
| Real Estate | 518,671 | 87% | 92% |
| Hair Salon | 446,811 | 71% | 98% |
| Attorney | 269,697 | 87% | 89% |
| Clothing Boutique | 217,175 | 84% | 94% |
| Auto Repair | 210,552 | 67% | 98% |
| Insurance | 189,623 | 90% | 85% |
| Dental | 183,637 | 87% | 100% |
| Massage Therapy | 175,560 | 79% | 97% |
| Hotel & Lodging | 163,202 | 88% | 91% |
| Auto Dealer | 143,509 | 80% | 99% |
| Gym | 128,190 | 87% | 93% |
| Bank & Credit Union | 119,623 | 94% | 99% |
| Asian Restaurant | 113,409 | 91% | 98% |
| Mental Health Private Practice | 112,677 | 86% | 98% |
By state: California 1,314,710 · Texas 1,045,369 · Florida 919,323 · New York 657,408 · Illinois 429,851 · Pennsylvania 416,335 · Georgia 381,561 · Ohio 369,583 · North Carolina 365,359 · Michigan 326,085.
Fragmentation
The home-service trades are the least consolidated large markets in the country: no national brand holds even 2% of HVAC, electrical, septic or landscaping locations.
Franchise systems are visible where they exist: restaurants carry 91,331 franchise locations, insurance 18,516 and gyms 8,167, against 2 for HVAC and 0 for roofing and septic. For a buyer that means no dominant acquirer bidding up every deal, and room for a regional roll-up. Large company-owned chains were removed at load, so read these as shares of the businesses DealFlow OS tracks.
Reachability
A buyer can call 95% of these businesses and email roughly one in six directly from the owner's own website, in the trades crawled so far.
Across all 11.5 million classified businesses, 95% list a phone and 83% a website. Email and owner names come from DealFlow OS's crawl of each business's website (1.05 million sites, Oct 31 – Nov 6) plus public records (SBA PPP, CMS NPPES), so they are shown only for trades the crawl has covered.
| Trade | Businesses | With website | With email | With owner name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Insurance | 189,623 | 90% | 24.9% | 20.1% |
| Roofing | 54,940 | 85% | 19.3% | 7.4% |
| Pest Control | 23,055 | 88% | 16.3% | 7.3% |
| Septic | 5,471 | 77% | 16.1% | 3.5% |
| HVAC | 60,458 | 85% | 15.5% | 5.6% |
| Auto Repair | 210,552 | 67% | 15.1% | 6.4% |
| Electrical | 40,506 | 79% | 14.4% | 5.4% |
| Dental | 183,637 | 87% | 14.0% | 16.3% |
| Plumbing | 46,385 | 81% | 13.8% | 6.4% |
| Landscaping | 59,540 | 78% | 11.5% | 3.5% |
Owner names run highest where public registries name an official: dental (NPPES) and insurance. Email rates are a floor; the crawl is still running. Industries not yet crawled (restaurants, salons, real estate, attorneys) are left out rather than shown at zero.
Top cities for buyers
Houston ranks first or second in all five of these industries, and Texas places two cities in the top five for three of them.
| Industry | #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auto Repair | Houston, TX (2,929) | Los Angeles, CA (1,505) | Phoenix, AZ (1,198) | Chicago, IL (1,188) | San Antonio, TX (1,188) |
| Insurance | Houston, TX (2,903) | Miami, FL (1,473) | San Antonio, TX (1,377) | Chicago, IL (1,265) | New York, NY (1,232) |
| Dental | New York, NY (3,080) | Houston, TX (1,940) | Los Angeles, CA (1,483) | Chicago, IL (1,482) | San Diego, CA (1,018) |
| Hair Salon | New York, NY (7,091) | Houston, TX (5,996) | Chicago, IL (3,995) | Los Angeles, CA (3,772) | San Antonio, TX (2,752) |
| Restaurant | New York, NY (10,865) | Houston, TX (6,705) | Chicago, IL (5,943) | Los Angeles, CA (5,278) | Miami, FL (3,981) |
Rankings are by city name as listed, not metro area: suburbs such as Katy or Spring are not rolled into Houston, so metro totals run higher.
What it means for buyers
The acquirable market is large, independent and reachable, and almost none of it will ever appear on a listing site.
- Source off-market. A single trade in a single metro is a pipeline of hundreds of owners (Houston alone has 2,929 auto repair shops). Listing sites carry a small fraction of that.
- Pick fragmented trades for roll-ups. At 98–99% independent, HVAC, electrical, septic, plumbing and landscaping have no national consolidator setting prices in most markets.
- Most are small. About half of PPP-matched HVAC and plumbing businesses reported 5–19 jobs: owner-operated, but large enough to have a team.
- Call first. Phone coverage is 95%; owner email is 14–25% in the trades crawled. A phone-first, email-second sequence reaches the most owners.
These are counts of operating businesses, not businesses for sale, and say nothing about any owner's intent to sell or any buyer's returns.
Methodology
Counts come from DealFlow OS's business database as of November 6, 2026, built on public sources and refreshed nightly.
| Source | What it provides | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Overture Maps Places | Business universe: name, category, location, phone, website, brand, operating status | Release 2026-09-23 |
| DealFlow OS website crawl | Emails and owner names published on each business's own website | Oct 31 – Nov 6, 2026 (1.05M sites) |
| SBA PPP loan data (FOIA) | Jobs reported, sole-proprietor owner names | Loans approved Apr 2020 – Jun 2021 |
| CMS NPPES (NPI registry) | Health-care organizations' authorized officials | September 2026 |
| FMCSA carrier census | Trucking and transport registrations | Through Aug 28, 2026 |
Universe. 13,625,907 operating businesses in the 50 states and DC. Excluded: permanently closed places, listings with no phone and no website, individuals, schools, government and places of worship, and a blocklist of large company-owned chains (franchises are kept). Each location counts once.
Industries. Each Overture category maps to one of DealFlow OS's 431 industries (390 have businesses). 15.9% of businesses sit in catch-all categories such as "uncategorized" and are not assigned.
Limits.
- No source publishes a founding year, so this edition reports no business-age statistics.
- "Independent" means no brand in the listing; Overture's brand coverage is partial, so chain share is understated.
- Email and owner rates reflect which trades the crawl has reached, not a property of the industry.
- Size bands come from 2020–21 PPP borrowers matched to current listings (10.6% coverage).
- Cities are ranked by listed city name, not metro area.