Win the catchment the market serves worst.
Ten stores or two thousand, one city or a hundred, yours or run for you — each against the businesses already serving its streets, the British Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands included.
Which of these seven areas is still underserved?A demand map ranks areas by people and spending power. How happy people are with the businesses there shows which are still underserved.
Tell apart two areas a demand map ranks alike.
Two areas of one city, alike in population and purchasing power. The measure works from the streets a store would serve — before there is a store, an app install or a single order.
Alike in people, spending power and number of grocers — one served, one underserved
Two areas of one city, 4.5 km apart; the underserved one was the unhappier in each of five years.
The case for a unit is ready the week it is offered.
Ask the question your next meeting turns on.
Eight things expansion leads say, and the answer each one gets.
What expansion leads say
Sample one dark-store network
Which one do we sign?
The third — the same businesses in reach, and the least happy with them.
The three reaches hold about the same number of grocery businesses. In the third, 45% of the opinions about them are unhappy, against 12% in the first.
Sign the third, while its businesses still fall short.
The lease goes where people are still unhappy.
Where is there still space?
Underserved: where the businesses are many and the people unhappy.
63 reaches here hold more than twenty grocery businesses. In 9 of them, the people are unhappiest with those businesses.
Take the crowded reaches whose people are unhappy.
Underserved reaches inside the areas called full.
Which stores do we close?
The ones in areas that were already well served.
36 of the network’s reaches sit above the market’s middle for how well they serve; 31 sit below.
Start the list with the reaches that were always served.
A smaller network, standing in the underserved reaches.
Was this ever going to work?
The businesses already there answered that before the lease was signed.
In this reach 84% of the opinions about the businesses serving it are happy — it was served before the store arrived.
Take the reach the week the unit is offered.
The answer arrives before the signature does.
Do we open the same way over there?
The distance between one network’s stores belongs to the market.
In one market 91% of that format’s stores sit inside another of its own reaches. In another, 7%.
Set the spacing by the market first, then by the plan.
A second market entered on its own numbers.
Which shops do we convert?
The ones whose neighbours serve their streets least well.
Of 71 candidate shops, 12 sit in reaches whose people are least happy with the businesses there.
Convert those first.
A network built from the shops already held.
Is it the operator or the area?
Every reach is rated the same way, whoever holds the lease.
33 stores sit in reaches served worse than the market’s middle; 11 come up at every meeting.
Judge the reach first, then talk about the store.
One measure both sides can argue from.
What decides this unit at the committee?
The businesses already serving that address, and how the people rate them.
Around this address 53% of the opinions about those businesses are unhappy; two reaches over, 19%.
Take the address whose people are least happy.
A committee paper carrying its own evidence.
Tell a crowded reach from a served one.
A catchment is one store’s reach — the two or three kilometres out it can deliver to. Where more people live, more grocers trade, and the people there are served no better.
Share whose grocers serve better than half the market’s reaches
The same holds in nine markets of ten, nearly a hundred and fifty thousand reaches.
A demand map shows the people and their spending power. Each store’s reach shows what is still underserved.
Rank the stores you have by the streets they landed on.
One grocery network of about 3,200 locations, one market: half its stores sit where the businesses around them serve people worse than the market’s middle. A convenience network of about 8,900 shows how much a network crowds itself.
One network of about 3,200 locations, half of it worse served
The stores landed either side of the middle, in areas a demand map ranks highest too.
Space every market on its own numbers.
Two networks, more than forty markets.
Two networks: how much each crowds itself changes with the market
The share of a network’s stores that share a reach with a sibling.
Write the business case for the next market on how well its businesses already serve.
Judge one area the same way for every team.
One team picks the area; every other team meets it once the store is standing.
The candidate areas, ranked before the committee sits
- Every business trading in each candidate area, by kind.
- How well the people there rate those businesses.
- Each candidate area’s population and spending power.
The case for one unit, the week it is offered
- Every business inside the reach of an address you name.
- What the people there praise, and what they mark down.
- Which hours those businesses are busiest.
What is still underserved inside the areas everyone calls full
- How many businesses of each kind trade in every area.
- How well each of those areas is served.
- Which of your own reaches cover the same streets.
Every store rated against the area around it
- Each store’s own reach, and how well it is served.
- Where each store sits against its own market’s middle.
- How the visits around it have moved.
What an area is served by, and still waits for
- Which kinds of business trade in an area.
- The categories an area is thin on.
- Price by weight and per piece, against the shops already serving the area.
What each area already calls fair
- What one area says about value for money.
- Where it sits against the areas beside it.
- Which price bracket the businesses there sit in.
Every area the network holds, on one footing
- Every store’s area on one measure, in every market.
- How much of the network sits in areas already served.
- How many people live around each store, and how much they can spend.
One measure of the area, and every team takes its own answer from it.
Take one reach apart when the meeting asks.
The network here; the detail one page over.
Weekly refreshed, since 2020
Rank the reaches you hold, and the ones you want.
Why are areas a demand map ranks alike served so differently? Leave your email; every reach comes back as a list of the businesses serving it, and how well they serve.