Twenty years before M&A Science existed, Kison Patel learned how to spot a deal from a real estate developer named Jerry Cedicci. This episode tells Jerry's story: orphaned in France at age 7, he arrived in Chicago in 1981, speaking no English. He would go on to turn a French bakery counter into a real estate portfolio worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Jerry opened his first Café Croissant on Walton Street in Chicago with a baker he'd hired sight unseen. What he lacked in market research, he more than made up for with conviction. The store did $1,500 on day one against a $450 target, then $60,000 in its first month.

He used that cash flow to negotiate an option to buy his landlord's building and, ten years later, closed on it for $10 million.

From there, Jerry moved fully into real estate: rehabbing a derelict meatpacking building into condos, buying a struggling nightclub through his accountant, and converting a single-room-occupancy hotel into a five-star property he sold for $24 million.

What you'll learn

Build conviction before you have proof. Jerry opened his first bakery with no market research and no baker, just a read on the neighborhood and a willingness to bet on it.
Turn early cash flow into structural rights, not just better terms. He used his bakery's daily revenue to negotiate a 10-year option to buy his landlord's building outright, thinking well beyond lower rent.
Buy the operator and the asset separately. When Jerry wanted a meatpacking building, he priced the business and the real estate as two separate offers and kept the owner on the payroll for six months to protect the operation while he refinanced.
Get a rejected loan explained line by line. After a bank turned him down, Jerry asked exactly why, then rebuilt his pitch for the next lender (and got the loan).
Scout a one-mile radius around your best location. He used a one-mile radius around his top-performing bakery to find the derelict building that became his first ground-up development project.
Negotiate the deal you want, not the one on offer. A landlord's refusal became a lease with better terms and an option to buy the building for a fraction of its appraised value.

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Turn what you heard into a repeatable M&A practice. Explore the Buyer-Led M&A™ Certification for practical frameworks, tools, and decision-making habits you can apply on your next deal.

The Man Who Taught Kison Patel to See M&A Opportunities

M&A Science

The Man Who Taught Kison Patel to See M&A Opportunities