How to Choose a Restaurant Location: Rent, Research, 2027

The food business has an uncomfortable rule: the kitchen decides whether customers come back, but the address decides how hard they have to work to get there. Ohio State's landmark restaurant-failure study found that the Columbus ZIP codes packed with the most restaurants also produced the most ownership turnover, almost exactly in proportion (a correlation of .9919), though turnover there counts owner retirements and sales as well as closures (Parsa et al., 2005). A follow-up survival analysis of 3,128 restaurants in a single Georgia county found location a significant predictor of closure alongside restaurant size and chain affiliation (Parsa et al., 2011). National data puts the first-year number lower than either single-region study: our reading of the BLS and UC Berkeley figures in the restaurant failure rate guide puts about 17% of independents closing in year one, against the 26% Parsa measured in Columbus alone.

This guide translates the site-selection playbook that US chains run with data teams into steps an independent owner can execute with a notebook, three days, and one spreadsheet: the rent math, the crowd analysis, the chain tactics worth copying, the building and lease checks, the franchise trap, and what to prepare for if you are opening in 2027.

What makes a restaurant location right for your business?

A good restaurant location brings together five things: customers who want your food, prices they are willing to pay, convenient access, a building that supports your operation, and costs your sales can cover. A busy street satisfies only part of that test.

A coffee shop serving commuters, a neighborhood dinner restaurant, and a kitchen built around delivery can succeed in very different places. Before comparing storefronts, define what a successful order looks like for your business: who buys, when they buy, how they reach you, and how much remains after fulfilling the order.

Your location research should answer one specific question: can this address generate enough profitable orders to support this restaurant? That question gives every traffic count, rent quote, and demographic report a purpose.

What should you define about your concept before you look at addresses?

Write down your expected average check, busiest meal periods, service format, and mix of dine-in, pickup, delivery, and catering sales. Then evaluate locations against those requirements rather than the other way round. The table below is a set of starting points for investigation, not rules that guarantee success.

An expensive menu is not automatically wrong near a college, and a restaurant without its own parking lot is not automatically wrong downtown. What matters is whether the particular customers you need can reach you and will buy often enough. If your format decision is still open, the guide to foodservice systems maps formats to production models before you map them to sites.

Why is location the hardest restaurant decision to reverse?

Because rent is the one big cost you cannot manage after signing. Food cost drifts and you rewrite the menu. Labor spikes and you rework the schedule. But occupancy is locked in by contract for the life of a five or ten year lease, escalating on a schedule you agreed to before you opened, and restaurant net margins run 3% to 9% by segment, so a location that overcharges by even three points of sales consumes a large share of the profit line before the first order is cooked.

The research is narrower than the folklore. Parsa's team found ownership turnover was highest in the ZIP codes where restaurant concentration was also highest, and the 2011 survival analysis measured first-year closure ranging from 26% to 49% depending on ZIP code, with the highest-risk ZIPs carrying roughly 1.5 times the closing hazard of the lowest-risk one. In the same model, size was by far the largest effect, with the smallest and simplest operations closing at roughly four times the hazard of the largest. Chain affiliation mattered too, with independents running about 1.6 times the hazard of multi-unit operators, but that sits in the same range as location rather than above it, and the authors rank none of the three. The authors' own summary of the qualitative strand is worth keeping in view: a good location seems to be "more a moderating variable than a mediating (causal) variable in restaurant viability" (Parsa et al., 2005).

So location is not the number one restaurant killer, and anyone selling you a site on that basis is overselling. It is something more awkward: a factor that quietly amplifies or dampens everything else you do, on a contract you cannot renegotiate. The expensive corner with the beautiful storefront is often the trap rather than the prize, because it combines maximum occupancy cost, maximum competition, and a crowd that may be passing through rather than buying.

That is why the operating rule of this guide is a mindset shift. On the day you pick a site you are not a chef, you are an investor placing capital in a piece of real estate, and the question that matters is whether the money already moving through that trade area can cover your rent at a ratio you can survive.

How do McDonald's, Starbucks, and Domino's choose locations?

They remove emotion from the decision and buy data instead. Harry Sonneborn, McDonald's first president, told a group of Wall Street investors, "We are not basically in the food business. We are in the real estate business. The only reason we sell fifteen-cent hamburgers is because they are the greatest producer of revenue from which our tenants can pay us our rent" (John F. Love, "McDonald's: Behind the Arches", Bantam, 1986). The tactics that grew out of that mindset are worth copying at any scale:

• The commute side of the street. Retail site-selection guides have long told coffee and breakfast formats to take the going-to-work side of the road, on the logic that a morning customer will not cross traffic or hunt for a median break for a coffee (see The Jerde Partnership, "Building Type Basics for Retail and Mixed-Use Facilities", Wiley, 2004). Starbucks is the brand the rule usually gets hung on, but the company has never published it, so treat it as long-standing trade practice rather than a documented Starbucks criterion. At the big drive-thru brands the lane carries a large share of revenue, which makes ingress and egress, curb cuts, and turn friction part of the product.
• Anchor and co-tenancy psychology. Big brands rarely try to generate traffic from scratch. They attach themselves to crowds that already exist: grocery anchors, big-box centers, restaurant rows with two or three proven operators. A customer near an anchor store has already switched into spending mode, and leasing brokers price that mindset as co-tenancy.
• Delivery-radius math. Domino's picks sites by counting households and drive times inside the delivery zone, not by admiring the dining room. Its fiscal 2025 annual report describes "condensing our delivery areas to provide better delivery service and adding locations that are closer to our carryout customers", the approach it calls its fortressing strategy (Domino's 10-K, fiscal 2025). The same filing warns that building additional stores where it already has stores may negatively impact sales at the existing ones, so this is a trade the company makes with its eyes open rather than a free win.

None of this requires a data science team. It requires asking the chain questions about your own candidate site: which side of the commute is it on, what anchor already gathers my customer, and how many households can reach me in 10 minutes?

What is the difference between a moving crowd and a buying crowd?

A moving crowd is on its way somewhere else; a buying crowd came to spend. Confusing the two is the classic first-timer mistake, because raw foot traffic photographs beautifully and pays nothing.

Two details sharpen the table. First, purchasing power beats headcount: a college strip delivers enormous traffic that caps your average ticket, so a premium concept starves amid a full sidewalk. Second, hurry beats hunger: a commuter rushing for a train passes the best fine-casual concept in the state, which is why transit locations belong to formats measured in seconds.

How do you run a manual footfall count?

Sit at the site for 3 consecutive days, including one weekend day, and watch it in the morning, at lunch, and in the evening. That is the whole method, and it is the cheapest underwriting you will ever do on a six-figure decision:

1. Count, then classify. Not just how many people, but who: families or teenagers, office workers or tourists, buyers carrying bags or walkers passing through.

2. Watch the money. What are people spending at the neighboring businesses? A line at the $6 smoothie window tells you the trade area supports impulse spend; an empty premium salad shop next door is a verdict.

3. Time the friction. Sit in your car and try to enter the lot at 12:30pm and 6:30pm. Count how long the left turn takes, whether parking requires circling, and where the nearest signalized intersection is.

4. Record what you can observe. Entrances, queues, purchases, pickup activity, parking availability, wait times. Avoid assigning spending power based on how people look.

Three days feels slow next to a broker's glossy one-pager. It is also how you catch the site that looks alive at Saturday dinner and dead the other 20 shifts of the week. Treat it as a first screen rather than proof of annual demand, and repeat the observation when school schedules, tourism, weather, or local events could distort the result.

How do you test a broker's claims about a location?

Turn each claim into something you can independently check. "Great traffic" should come with a count, a date, a measurement method, and a description of what was counted, because vehicles passing a shopping center, pedestrians outside your entrance, and customers entering neighboring restaurants are three different measurements.

Start with several visits across weekdays and weekends. Include your intended opening hours, a quieter period, and the busiest period you expect to serve.

Use public data to sharpen the fieldwork

Census Business Builder is, in the Census Bureau's own description, a suite of services providing selected demographic and economic data tailored to specific types of users, with interactive maps plus geographic comparison and ranking charts for a location and business type you choose. Census OnTheMap maps where workers are employed and where they live.

Use those tools to identify questions worth investigating, and check each dataset's year and geography before you lean on it. OnTheMap is the clearest example of why that matters: its underlying LODES employment data runs years behind, and the December 2025 release brought the newest year only up to 2023. Historical employment counts do not tell you how many people will be in an office next Tuesday.

Google Maps Popular Times can help you choose observation periods, but read it carefully. Google states that popularity for any given hour is shown relative to the typical peak popularity for that business for the week, and that the data comes from aggregated, anonymized Location History (Google Business Profile Help). Because each venue's bars are scaled to its own peak and drawn from an opted-in sample, a taller bar at one restaurant is not evidence that it serves more customers than another, and it is never a headcount or a sales figure.

What is the 10 percent rent rule, and when does it mislead?

The 10 percent rule compares occupancy costs with sales: your total occupancy cost (base rent plus NNN charges of property taxes, insurance, and common-area maintenance) should not exceed 10% of expected sales. It can help screen a property, but it does not establish what your restaurant can afford.

Real costs usually sit lower than the ceiling. The National Restaurant Association's 2025 Restaurant Operations Data Abstract, drawn from more than 900 operators nationwide, puts median occupancy cost at 5.7% of sales for full-service survey respondents and 5.2% for limited-service in 2024, and the Association is explicit that the data is not intended to represent standards or goals for individual restaurants (National Restaurant Association, 2025). The 6% to 8% band you will see in lease guides is an underwriting range, the number to sign against when you cannot yet know your sales, not a measured tier of healthy operators.

Start by defining your costs consistently. Depending on the lease, your occupancy budget may include base rent, property-tax charges, property-insurance charges, common-area maintenance, and other required payments. Do not count the same expense twice elsewhere in the budget. Then work backward, because required monthly sales equals monthly occupancy cost divided by your chosen occupancy percentage.

Assume a location costs $8,000 per month in total occupancy, you open 26 days per month, and your average order is $25 before sales tax and tips.

These are illustrative scenarios rather than recommended targets. The useful question becomes: what evidence supports 154 orders a day at this address? Break that number into breakfast, lunch, dinner, pickup, and delivery, then check whether both demand and kitchen capacity support it, because a daily average can hide an impossible lunch rush. Then apply the mirror test: stand at the site and ask whether this address, with this crowd, hands you that number on the rainy Tuesdays too.

A manageable rent ratio does not guarantee profitability

You also need a break-even sales model, which is a different calculation from the occupancy ratio. Break-even sales equals fixed operating costs divided by contribution margin percentage, where contribution margin is the share of sales remaining after the variable costs of fulfilling those sales.

For illustration, a restaurant with $54,000 in monthly fixed operating costs and a 60% contribution margin breaks even at $90,000 in monthly sales. At $100,000 in sales that model produces $6,000 before debt service, income taxes, and capital spending. At $80,000 it produces a $6,000 operating loss. The rent did not change. The volume did.

Include reasonable owner compensation in the operating budget, and model opening costs, loan payments, and cash reserves separately. A location has to survive the opening ramp, not just look profitable in a mature-year forecast. See the 30/30/30 rule for where occupancy sits inside the full cost structure.

Two US-specific notes. Read the NNN line as carefully as the base rent, because taxes and CAM commonly add 20% to 30% on top and they escalate. And if your concept is prep-heavy, remember the rent arbitrage documented in our central kitchen guide: average US retail asking rent reached $24.79 per square foot in Q2 2026, up 2.4% year over year, with retail availability holding at 4.9% (CBRE, Q2 2026 US Retail Figures), while industrial space asks substantially less in most markets. Square footage that cooks but never seats a guest may not belong on retail rent at all.

Can this building actually support your restaurant?

A former restaurant is a promising starting point, but the existing setup may not support your menu, equipment, seating, or operating hours. This is where otherwise sound deals collapse, and it is the part brokers are least equipped to answer.

The Small Business Administration notes that your business location determines the taxes, zoning laws, and regulations you will be subject to, and that costs varying significantly by location include salaries, minimum wage laws, property values, rental rates, business insurance rates, utilities, and government licenses and fees (SBA). Confirm the specifics with your local and state agencies, because none of it is uniform across state lines or even across a county.

Accessibility belongs in the initial inspection and the initial budget, not in a later phase. The ADA requires small businesses to remove architectural barriers in existing facilities where that is "readily achievable", meaning easily accomplishable without much difficulty or expense; alterations must be made accessible to the maximum extent feasible, and newly built facilities must be accessible and usable (ADA.gov small business primer, last updated February 2020).

Get written estimates for the work your concept requires, and include the cost of time. Deposits, insurance, financing, and other expenses continue while the restaurant is waiting to open.

What should you check in the lease?

Have a commercial lease attorney review permitted use, additional charges, rent increases, repair responsibilities, personal guarantees, renewal options, assignment rights, and the consequences of delayed or denied approvals. Discuss whether contingencies, landlord work, or rent concessions can be negotiated, and do not assume those protections exist by default.

New York City's Department of Small Business Services publishes a free 40 page Comprehensive Guide to Commercial Leasing that walks through the terms tenants most often get caught by, including permitted use, additional rent, renewal options, assignment and subleasing, and personal guaranties such as the good guy guaranty. It also carries a pre-lease due diligence checklist covering steps like verifying your broker's license, pulling the Certificate of Occupancy, and confirming zoning. The document dates from around 2017 and its specific provisions are written for New York, so use it as a checklist of questions rather than a statement of the rules in your state.

Which location problems deserve closer investigation?

Four site conditions come up often enough to warrant a much harder look. None of them proves a site cannot work, and the decision in each case is whether the problem can be corrected, accommodated, or priced into the business.

1. Repeated tenant turnover. Several closures at the same address justify investigating the property's history rather than assuming the previous operators were careless. Speak with former operators where possible, review available records, and look into rent increases, construction problems, access, customer demand, and operating constraints. A closure does not establish its cause, but a pattern is a question you should be able to answer before you sign.

2. Parking that does not match the customer journey. A suburban family restaurant and a restaurant beside a busy subway station have completely different access needs. Check how your intended guests and employees will actually arrive, along with accessible routes and pickup arrangements. In much of suburban and small-metro America, dinner arrives by car, and a family that cannot park within a short walk becomes a customer of the place down the road with a lot.

3. Difficult entry or exit. Medians, restricted turns, confusing driveways, and congested intersections all reduce convenience, and a mid-block site behind a divider serves one direction of traffic well and the other poorly. Test the routes during service hours rather than assuming a road divider removes a fixed percentage of customers.

4. Limited visibility. Poor frontage raises real questions about discovery and wayfinding, and basements, second floors, and storefronts hidden behind trees or monument signs all struggle with it. A destination restaurant or a delivery-focused operation can still work there, but its customer-acquisition plan and its economics have to reflect the limitation. The second half of visibility is now digital: a site that is hard to describe is also hard to find on a map app, which is why local SEO belongs in the site walk-through.

Does franchise site approval mean the location is a sound investment?

Franchise approval is one input into the decision. It is not a guarantee of demand, profit, or a return on your investment, and treating it as underwriting is an expensive mistake.

The Federal Trade Commission notes that many franchisors retain the right to approve sites and that "some franchisors conduct extensive site studies as part of the approval process and a site they approve may be more likely to attract customers" (FTC, Consumer's Guide to Buying a Franchise). Ask what research supports the approval and how closely the comparison restaurants resemble your proposed location. It is also worth remembering where the franchisor's economics sit: an initial fee, margins on the build-out and equipment package, and royalties that begin the day you open.

• Item 19 holds any financial performance representations the franchisor chooses to make. These are optional, but the FTC stresses they must have a reasonable factual basis. If Item 19 is empty or vague, price that silence.
• Item 20 shows system growth and owner turnover, plus contact information for current franchisees and for franchisees who left during the franchisor's last fiscal year. Closure clusters are the site-selection track record the sales deck leaves out.
• Your own count still applies. The 3-day footfall count and the occupancy test do not get waived because a brand approved the address. If the numbers fail, the logo on the door will not save them.

Contact operators beyond the brand's preferred reference list, and ask about opening costs, delays, customer volume, support, and time to break even. Then build your own location budget including franchise fees, royalties, advertising contributions, and other obligations. The clean rule: never advance a deposit because the franchisor blessed the site.

Does a strong location matter if most of your orders are online?

Yes, but online volume changes what you are paying rent for. A location sets two ceilings: the walk-in ceiling (frontage, visibility, parking) and the cost ceiling (occupancy as a share of every dollar). A commission-free direct ordering channel raises the first ceiling by extending your trade area beyond the people who physically pass the door, because the customer three neighborhoods away who orders pickup twice a month never sees your frontage.

The rent math and the channel math interact, and the arithmetic can favor the cheaper site. Moving from 13% occupancy, well past the 10% ceiling, down to 7% frees up six points of sales, as wide as the entire 3% to 9% net margin band, so a B-plus site can clear more profit than an A site whenever it produces comparable revenue. Those percentages are an illustration rather than benchmarks. Channel mix pulls the same lever, because direct orders arrive without the 15% to 30% marketplace toll documented in our delivery app commission tracker; on a flat-fee platform like DirectOrders ($249 per month, zero commission), added volume from the wider trade area lands at card-processing cost. Which way any specific pair of sites nets out depends on the sales each address can actually deliver, which is exactly what the 3-day count is for. You can model the direct-ordering side of that with the break-even and ROI calculator, and the playbook for building the channel is in how to get more direct orders.

How pickup and delivery change the property you need

Pickup and delivery change the work the property has to do. Evaluate where completed orders wait, how customers identify the pickup entrance, where drivers can stop legally, and whether collection traffic interferes with seated guests or kitchen staff.

Map realistic travel times during your actual service periods rather than drawing a radius on a map. A nearby neighborhood across a congested bridge can be harder to serve than a more distant neighborhood connected by a direct road, and delivery time optimization is a different problem once the lease is signed. Domino's runs this trade at system scale with the fortressing strategy described earlier, condensing delivery areas and accepting pressure on existing stores to buy shorter drive times.

Build separate contribution estimates for dine-in, direct pickup, direct delivery, and marketplace orders, including the relevant packaging, processing, commissions, delivery expenses, discounts, and labor. An extra dollar of sales does not contribute the same amount through every channel. A direct ordering channel supports repeat business, but it still carries acquisition, software, payment, and fulfillment costs, so compare those explicitly when deciding how much rent the business can carry.

How can AI help you compare candidate addresses?

AI is useful when it helps you compare evidence, identify missing information, and test assumptions. Give it a defined concept and a consistent set of documents for each candidate property. An address and a request to find the best location are not enough.

The tooling is becoming more practical. In its June 2026 release, Esri moved the ArcGIS Business Analyst assistant out of beta into general availability, and the same release added open hours filtering that screens points of interest by actual operating hours when the SafeGraph data source is selected (Esri, June 2026). For restaurant owners that supports a useful distinction: the competitors open at lunchtime may tell you very little about the late-night market you intend to serve.

Five useful ways to apply AI

Check AI-generated calculations in a spreadsheet, and check extracted lease terms against the actual clauses. Reviews are a selective sample as well: complaints about parking tell you what to investigate, but they do not measure how many sales a restaurant lost.

A prompt for comparing two candidate addresses

Compare these restaurant locations using only the documents and
observations I provide. My concept is [description], my expected
average order is [amount], and my main service periods are [times].

Separate verified facts, my assumptions, and missing information.
Show the source and date for each important input. Calculate
occupancy costs and required daily orders using the stated
operating days. Test a scenario with sales 20% below plan.

Identify questions for the broker, landlord, local authorities,
and professional advisers. Do not invent foot traffic, customer
conversion rates, competitor revenue, permit approval, or future
development dates. Explain which missing facts could change
the decision.

The objective is a better decision record. A confident answer without traceable inputs adds nothing you can act on.

What changed in 2026, and what should you prepare for in 2027?

The basic location questions have not changed. The cost of answering them poorly has become harder to absorb.

1. Rebuild the budget with current costs

In a July 2026 analysis, the National Restaurant Association estimated that total expenses for an average restaurant jumped 36% between 2019 and 2026 (National Restaurant Association, July 2026). That is an Association estimate built on a modeled cost structure rather than the increase every restaurant experienced, but it shows why an old business plan needs fresh inputs.

For a 2027 opening, obtain current staffing assumptions, supplier estimates, insurance quotes, utility information, and construction bids, then apply known rent escalations and scheduled wage changes. Alaska is a worked example of a change you can already put in the model: under Ballot Measure 1, passed in November 2024, the state minimum wage rose to $14.00 an hour on July 1, 2026 and rises again to $15.00 on July 1, 2027, subject to the statute's exemptions (Alaska Department of Labor, 2025). Other jurisdictions have their own schedules, and yours belongs in the 2027 budget now rather than as a surprise in the first quarter of trading.

2. Match spending capacity to the concept

A National Restaurant Association analysis published September 15, 2026 reports that households earning above $100,000 account for roughly 6 in 10 dollars spent on food away from home, combining 27% from households at $200,000 and above with 33% from the $100,000 to $199,999 range, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data (National Restaurant Association, September 2026).

That does not mean every restaurant should chase affluent neighborhoods. It means headcount alone is insufficient, and your pricing, visit frequency, customer mix, and local occupancy costs have to work together. For a value-focused restaurant, repeat demand at an attainable check can matter more than proximity to expensive homes.

3. Do not assume closures will make good space cheap

CBRE's midyear 2026 retail outlook expects a continued reduction in overall retail availability, with historically low construction completions (11 million sq ft over the trailing four quarters against an 18 million sq ft historical annual average) helping keep fundamentals solid even as demand moderates (CBRE, Midyear 2026). That is a broad commercial-property outlook rather than a forecast for restaurant units specifically.

For 2027, compare actual local proposals and investigate how much usable infrastructure each property includes. A lower advertised rent can arrive with a larger construction bill or a longer delay before you can open the doors.

4. Make digital discovery part of the location plan

Google names three factors behind local results, relevance, distance, and prominence, and says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local search (Google Business Profile Help). Your physical location therefore stays relevant even when discovery starts online.

Plan to provide a clear address, accurate hours, an accessible menu, entrance photographs, and useful pickup directions, and keep the restaurant's website and business listings consistent. For AI-assisted discovery the preparation is much the same. Google's own guidance is explicit that structured data is not required for generative AI search and that there is no special schema markup to add for it, though it remains worth using for rich results in ordinary search (Google Search Central). There is no defensible percentage of 2027 restaurant demand to assign to AI, and anyone quoting you one is guessing.

5. Prepare for several outcomes

Build a base case, then test what happens if sales come in 20% below plan, opening is delayed by three months, pickup and delivery become a larger share of orders, a nearby employer reduces attendance, an anchor tenant leaves, or construction and equipment costs exceed the estimate.

These are stress tests rather than predictions. The question is whether you have enough cash, operational flexibility, and contractual protection to respond to any of them.

What evidence should you have before committing?

Create one comparison sheet for every shortlisted property, using the same assumptions wherever possible.

A high total score should never override a critical unresolved issue. Strong traffic cannot compensate for an operation that is not permitted or an improvement project you cannot fund.

Your final decision should be explainable in a few sentences: who will buy, why they will choose you, how they will reach you, and how the resulting orders cover the costs of the business.

The investor's checklist before you sign

Emotions folded and set aside, this is the whole method in ten lines:

1. Write the concept down first: average check, service periods, format, channel mix.

2. Classify the crowd as buying, moving, or low-budget, from 3 days of your own counting.

3. Confirm the commute side, the turn friction, and the parking at peak, from your own car.

4. Count households and incomes in the 10 minute trade area, and check each dataset's vintage.

5. Turn every broker claim into a source, a date, a method, and your own independent check.

6. Run the occupancy test on total cost, NNN included, against honest daily orders.

7. Run a separate break-even sales model, and make sure the site survives the opening ramp.

8. Have the building inspected for your menu: permitted use, hood, grease, utilities, accessibility.

9. Have a commercial lease attorney read the lease before the deposit, not after.

10. Read Items 19 and 20 before believing any franchise site approval.

Where the money already circulates, where the occupancy fits inside a ratio you can survive, where the building can legally cook your menu, and where the customer spends almost no effort to reach you: set up the game there.

Sources

Research on restaurant failure and location:

• Parsa, Self, Njite, King: Why Restaurants Fail (Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 46(3), 2005), free full text: first-year ownership turnover of about 26% in Columbus, Ohio, the debunking of the 90% myth, and location as a moderating rather than causal variable
• Parsa, Self, Sydnor-Busso, Yoon: Why Restaurants Fail? Part II (Journal of Foodservice Business Research, 14(4), 2011): survival analysis of 3,128 restaurants in one Georgia county; affiliation, location, and size each significant, with size the largest effect and no ranking of the three

Costs, rents, and consumer spending:

• National Restaurant Association, 2025 Restaurant Operations Data Abstract: median occupancy cost of 5.7% of sales for full-service and 5.2% for limited-service in 2024, from more than 900 operators, published as management tools rather than standards or goals
• National Restaurant Association, Elevated costs continue to pressure profitability (July 2026): total expenses for an average restaurant estimated up 36% between 2019 and 2026
• National Restaurant Association, Higher-income households continue to drive restaurant sales (September 15, 2026): households above $100,000 account for roughly 6 in 10 dollars spent on food away from home, using BLS data
• CBRE, US Retail Figures, Q2 2026: average retail asking rent of $24.79 per sq ft, up 2.4% year over year, availability rate 4.9%
• CBRE, US Real Estate Market Outlook, Midyear 2026, Retail: expected continued reduction in retail availability on historically low construction completions
• Alaska Department of Labor: minimum wage of $14.00 from July 1, 2026 and $15.00 from July 1, 2027 under Ballot Measure 1

Research tools and public data:

• US Census Business Builder: demographic and economic data with geographic comparison and ranking
• US Census OnTheMap: where workers are employed and where they live, with LODES data currently running to 2023
• Google Business Profile Help: popular times and visit duration: hourly popularity shown relative to each business's own weekly peak
• Google Business Profile Help: tips to improve local ranking: relevance, distance, and prominence
• Google Search Central: optimizing for generative AI features: structured data not required for generative AI search
• Esri, What's New in ArcGIS Business Analyst, June 2026: Business Analyst assistant general availability and open hours POI filtering

Property, lease, and franchise guidance:

• US Small Business Administration: launch your business: how location determines taxes, zoning, and regulations, and which costs vary by location
• US Department of Justice, ADA Primer for Small Business: readily achievable barrier removal, alterations, and new construction
• NYC Small Business Services, Comprehensive Guide to Commercial Leasing: lease terms, construction, professional review, and due diligence checklist (New York specific, circa 2017)
• Federal Trade Commission, A Consumer's Guide to Buying a Franchise: site approval, Item 19, Item 20, and franchisee interviews
• Domino's Pizza Form 10-K, fiscal 2025: the fortressing strategy and the acknowledged risk to sales at existing stores
• John F. Love, "McDonald's: Behind the Arches" (Bantam, 1986): the Sonneborn real estate quote
• The Jerde Partnership, "Building Type Basics for Retail and Mixed-Use Facilities" (Wiley, 2004): the going-to-work side of the street as retail trade practice