Gas station / convenience store / liquor store due diligence

[Joseph Stewart]

Hello! I am close to putting a gas station / convenience store / liquor store under contract. $8M asking price, $3M to business, $5M to the real estate. The sellers are requesting what I consider an unusually short due diligence period to evaluate the business side -- only 20 days. They are ok with allowing a 60-day DD period to evaluate the real estate itself (given that environmental inspections and whatnot will likely take that long). I'm concerned about evaluating the business that quickly, and of course the red flag inherent in a seller trying to "rush" things along. Supposedly the 20 days is non-negotiable at this stage. I'm willing to pay their asking price (if the numbers hold up, it appears to be around a 13% CAP rate with very little competition) and the other terms we've negotiated have been acceptable. I'm just debating walking away over this DD timeframe, but thought I'd reach out to see if anyone has any guidance here.

Given that the owners own some other similar properties, one of my big concerns is that they could easily be running expenses against a different business, to the benefit of the subject property.  For example, buy a case of product under Company B's books, but sell it through Company A.  Company A therefore appears more profitable.  Given the huge number of individual inventory items in a convenience store and liquor store, selectively doing this would presumably be pretty hard for me to track down.  Or using employees that are being paid by Company B, to work at Company A.  Etc.

I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for how to best conduct due diligence on this type of business, what other common trickery or red flags should I be on the lookout for?  I obviously plan to request detailed POS reports, purchase receipts, bank statements, payroll reports, tax returns, and all the rest, but I'm not sure I can dig into all that within 20 days.

Thanks in advance for any guidance!