For businesses that depend on customers walking through the door, location is not just important — it is the product. A well-located restaurant or retail store in a high-traffic corridor outperforms a mediocre competitor in a better building on a quieter street, every time. Site selection is where most retail success stories begin, and most retail failures are rooted.
Traffic counts: the foundational metric
Traffic count — the number of vehicles passing a location per day — is the first filter for most retail site selections. Higher traffic generally means more potential customers, but the relationship is not linear. A 40,000 AADT arterial with high-speed through traffic may underperform a 20,000 AADT corridor with multiple shopping centers creating "trip chaining" behavior.
For food service, traffic count matters but so does the meal-occasion pattern. Breakfast and lunch concepts benefit from proximity to employment centers. Dinner and weekend concepts need residential density and destination traffic. Understanding the traffic quality, not just the quantity, is essential.
Demographics and trade area analysis
Professional retail site selection uses demographic data to define the trade area — the geographic zone from which your location will realistically draw customers — and then analyzes the population within that zone for:
- Household income and disposable spending power
- Age and family composition (particularly relevant for children's concepts, senior services, etc.)
- Population density and growth trends
- Presence of target customer segments
The Randall Road corridor and Route 59 in the western suburbs rank among the strongest retail corridors in Illinois outside of Chicago proper, precisely because of the demographic profile of surrounding communities — higher household incomes, family-oriented, with strong spending in most retail categories.
Visibility and accessibility
Visibility from the road is worth money. A corner pad site with frontage on two arterials commands a premium for good reason. Conversely, a space behind other buildings with limited signage rights may struggle regardless of traffic count.
Accessibility includes ease of ingress and egress, parking ratio (typically expressed as spaces per 1,000 SF), and proximity to signalized intersections. Locations that are difficult to enter or exit at peak hours see meaningful traffic diversion.
Co-tenancy and anchor effects
Being adjacent to a strong anchor tenant — a grocery store, a major fitness center, a high-traffic restaurant — can generate significant incidental traffic for neighboring tenants. Co-tenancy provisions in commercial leases allow tenants to renegotiate or terminate if a named anchor vacates, protecting against the risk of losing that traffic.
Conversely, avoid locations where the anchor has significant risk of closure or is already underperforming. An empty anchor pad poisons a center for all tenants.
