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RANGE

13

Know what you’re walking into before the capital is committed.

A new market punishes the things you assumed and never checked. The trade area that looked dense on a map but empties at night. The competitor you discounted who owns the daypart you were counting on. The guest you built the concept for who doesn’t live where you’re opening. We provide the competitive landscape, trade area research, and guest segmentation an operator needs before signing a lease or greenlighting a new concept, delivered in formats built to be acted on: a trade-area map drawn on drive-time isochrones, a sales-transfer estimate against your nearest existing unit, and a daypart-share table against the named competitor set.

This is analysis built to inform a decision, not to justify one already made. We tell you where the opportunity actually is, where it isn’t, and what the market will bear, clearly enough to act on, honestly enough to walk away.

Tell us what’s breaking.

Take the Diagnostic

Thirty to forty-five minutes, with the Straight Read back within 48 hours.

Scope of Work

  • —Competitive landscape mapping and positioning analysis
  • —Trade area demographics, psychographics, and traffic patterns
  • —Guest segmentation and target-profile development
  • —Daypart and occasion opportunity analysis
  • —New market entry and site feasibility assessment
  • —Sales transfer and cannibalization modeling

Instinct about the neighborhood is not a trade area.

The call comes at the point of no return: a lease weeks from signing, a new market under serious consideration, a second or third concept being greenlit on instinct about who lives nearby. By then the assumptions that matter most are usually the ones nobody pressure-tested, and they’re baked into the pro forma, the lease, and the concept itself. An engagement starts by naming the decision the analysis has to serve, then builds only the picture that decision needs and reads it through an operator’s eyes.

Each of the three documents — the drive-time map, the transfer model, the daypart-share table — answers a question that only gets more expensive to ask later. Drive time shows how guests actually reach a category like yours, which is almost never the circle drawn around a site. Transfer modeling settles what most groups avoid raising before a second location goes in three miles from the first: how much of that volume is new, and how much is just moving. Daypart share names who already owns lunch, dinner, and late night in that trade area, because the hours a concept was built to win are frequently already spoken for. Scope follows the decision. A lease deadline gets a fast read on the assumptions carrying the most weight; a multi-market expansion gets the fuller picture, market by market.

The record is on Selected Outcomes.

How it works

StepWhat happens
01Name the decision: lease, market entry, or new concept
02Draw the trade area on drive-time isochrones
03Model sales transfer against your nearest existing unit
04Read daypart share against the named competitor set
05Deliver a call you can act on, including walking away

Before

A site or new-market decision is being made on instinct and a radius drawn on a map, with no test of demand, competition, or what a second unit would take from the first.

After

Drive-time, demand, and cannibalization are modeled before the lease is signed, so the decision is made on evidence instead of a gut read on the neighborhood.

Further Reading

The number that predicts survival better than covers

Common Questions

When do we need a restaurant market analysis or feasibility study?

Before any commitment that’s expensive to unwind: signing a lease, entering a new market, or greenlighting a concept on assumptions about the trade area and the guest. The value is in testing those assumptions while you can still change course: confirming the demand, the competition, and the daypart opportunity are real before the capital is committed, not discovering the gaps after the doors are open.

How is this different from a standard market research report?

A standard report describes the market; ours is built to make a specific decision and read by someone who has run restaurants, not just studied them. We weight what actually drives a unit’s performance (trade area behavior, real competition for the occasion, guest segmentation, and cannibalization risk) and tell you where the opportunity isn’t, not only where it is. The test is whether you can act on it, including walking away.

What information do we need to bring to a market analysis?

Sales data from existing units where relevant, for cannibalization modeling; the specific sites or markets under consideration; and the assumptions already built into any pro forma or lease you’re evaluating. The point is to pressure-test what’s already assumed, not start from a blank map.

Can’t we get this from the broker’s demographic package?

The broker’s package exists to close the lease. That’s its job, and it shapes what the report shows. It’s built on radius demographics, which say who lives nearby, not how guests actually travel to your category, what a second unit takes from your first, or who already owns the dayparts you need. Those three questions are where site decisions actually fail, and none of them are in the package.

What happens if the analysis says don’t sign?

Then you just avoided the most expensive mistake in the business. A lease is years of rent against a read that was wrong on day one. A no comes with the reasons attached: which assumption failed, what a site would need to clear the bar, and where in the trade area the opportunity actually sits. Groups rarely stop looking after a no; they start looking with sharper criteria.
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