Restaurants face significant challenges collecting data for each store, making it difficult to benchmark performance. Without objective data to gauge store productivity, they are left only with subjective observations to understand whether a store is operationally efficient. Placer helps you track store productivity, identify struggling locations, benchmark against competitors, and establish a baseline for evaluating performance.

After reading this article, you’ll be able to answer:

1. How can I benchmark the performance of my restaurant locations?
2. How can I identify problem areas and opportunities to establish credibility and grow the business?
3. How does my restaurant’s foot traffic rank relative to others and compare to competitors?

Get started with the following steps:

Step 1: Analyze visitation data and compare it to competitors

a. Navigate to Explore and type your POI^{Point (Location) of Interest.} into the search bar. Up to 8 POIs can be chosen at one time by checking the empty white box next to your POI in the center of the page or on the left sidebar. The number of POIs selected will appear at the bottom of the left sidebar. Once the POIs are selected, click Open Report and select Property. This will open the Property report.

b. Adjust the dates to any custom range. Reports will default to the last 12 months, so you can click the calendar icon and choose the preferred date range, then click Apply. For example, analyze and compare data side by side for your POI and its competitor. Look at the estimated number of customers and visits (Metrics), the visit trends (Visits Trend), the performance of your locations (Ranking Overview), visits at any time of day (Hourly Visits), visits by day of the week (Daily Visits), and how long visitors spent at your locations (Length of Stay).

Learn about Foot Traffic Metrics

Step 2: See how specific locations rank

a. Navigate to Ranking in the left sidebar and view the performance of your store. You can assess how a store ranks against others in the same category or against its chain. You can also rank using total Visits or Visits per Square Foot.

b. You can evaluate a POI’s rankings at multiple levels. The left box shows national rankings. The drop-down options in the middle box include state, DMA, and CBSA. In the right right, you can choose to view rankings compared to stores within a specific number of miles.

d. The Ranking Index section at the bottom of the page allows for a filtered view of the ranked locations.

Learn about Ranking Overview

Step 3: Analyze store visitation trends

a. Navigate to Visits in the left-hand menu.  Scroll to view the first widget in the Visits report, named Visits Trend. This widget shows visitation for the selected POI(s) and time period.  Ensure that the “Outlier Indicator” toggle is flipped on, and then notice the dots indicating outliers on the trend line.  Click on a dot to launch Placer Assist, which provides helpful information and insights about that day, to help you contextualize the spike or dip.

In the example below, you can see a spike in visitation on April 8th to the Vons grocery store location, but not to the nearby Albertsons grocery store.  Placer Assist reveals that April 8th was the day before Easter Sunday.  The next spike aligns with Memorial Day, and the one that follows is on Independence Day.  Thus, it seems as though Vons is succeeding in capturing holiday shopping while Albertsons is not. This could be due to promotional campaigns and advertising, and it may reveal an opportunity for Albertsons to increase traffic on popular grocery shopping days.

b. Scroll down to view hourly and daily visitation trends, as well as length of stay metrics.   

Step 4: Assess store reach by analyzing trade areas

a. Navigate to Trade Area^{Representation of the dispersion of home and work locations that drive traffic to any venue.} in the left-hand menu. Understand the True Trade Area of your clients' locations and see the distance in miles required for visitors to reach the store (Trade Area Coverage by Distance). Filter by visitors’ home or work location, and by visit frequency to understand the travel patterns of more loyal visitors.

Learn about Trade Area Coverage by Distance