Finding a Retail Site? Trust the Data, Not Your Brand

When it comes to picking a site for a new retail location, whether that’s a coffee shop, restaurant, or clothing store, there are a handful of rules that have held true just as much today as they did 25 years ago when I started in commercial real estate.

Since 1998, I’ve been putting together site submittals and Real Estate Committee (REC) proposals, and I still see the same two mistakes repeated:

a) a client doesn’t have clear site criteria defined, and/or

b) They think their brand is so amazing that customers will just show up, even if the site is inferior or a competitor is sitting next door.

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work that way.

Ignore Your Competition at Your Own Risk

Here’s a story. There’s a mom-and-pop coffee shack (yes, literally a shack plopped onto a parking lot) on a busy highway in a Utah suburb. I stopped there on my way to work a few times. It was on the morning-commuter side of the road, right before a freeway entrance. Great location, ugly shack, good coffee, friendly service, reasonable prices. They did just fine for years.

Eventually, a big national coffee chain opened across the highway. It wasn’t on the morning-commuter side, but it caught traffic from people heading off the exit toward a nearby office park. I thought the little ma & pa shop would fold within the year. To my surprise, they held strong.

Fast-forward a bit—here comes a regional coffee chain. New building, drive-thru, highly visible, strong regional name… and they set up shop a stone’s throw away from both the national chain and the original shack on the superior, morning-commuter side. I thought, “Okay, now the mom-and-pop shop is toast.”

Wrong again. The regional brand crashed and burned in under 12 months. The little coffee shack? Still standing strong.

The lesson? Ignore your established competition, and you’ll end up with an expensive and traumatizing experience like the third-to-market regional coffee shop did.

A High Traffic Count Site: Blessing or Curse?

Retailers love high traffic counts. And yes, they’re important, but context matters.

If your site is on a highway with a 45+ mph speed limit, being at or near a stoplight is critical. Otherwise, cars may just fly by without ever noticing you. I recently watched an out-of-state coffee brand lease a site with tons of traffic, but it was located a bit too far from the nearest stoplight. They were gone in six months.

Sometimes, “lots of cars” doesn’t equal “lots of customers.”

Demographics Drive Decisions

Knowing your customer better than your competition is non-negotiable. The demographic data available today is incredible, and profiling your strongest locations can guide smarter site selection.

Look at your top stores and ask:

• Is your typical customer younger or older?

• Are they higher income, lower income, or middle ground?

• Do they stop in on weekdays during work hours, or weekends with family?

Population, age, income, and daytime population (employees) are all metrics that should be part of your analysis. This isn’t hype, it’s proven.

The Future of Site Selection

What makes today different is the technology at our fingertips. Mobile data and AI now allow us to track true customer movement patterns showing not just where people shop, but how long they stay, where else they go before and after, and even how often they come back. Couple that with geofencing, heat mapping, and predictive analytics, and we’re no longer guessing we’re making data-driven decisions with laser precision.

Planned housing and development pipelines still play a huge role, but now they can be blended with real-time mobility data, psychographic insights (lifestyle, spending behavior), and even loyalty app data to help retailers get ahead of the curve. Instead of waiting for competitors to discover an area, you can see the shift happening before it hits the ground.

In short, the days of “going with your gut” when choosing a site are long gone. Successful retailers trust the data, use the tools, and position themselves where their customers truly are, not just where they hope they’ll be. Do it right, and instead of learning an expensive lesson, you’ll be the one writing the case study others are reading.

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Doug Dautel works as a retail broker and as one of Legend's talented graphic designers. He provides top-notch graphics for the other brokers alongside the rest of the design team, all while repping some serious national retail tenants.