The decisions that set a scheme's ceiling are made when the site is still a drawing, using evidence that mostly describes places that already exist.
The decision: What to build, which categories to underwrite, and what the catchment will actually support.
The plot, and what is not built on it yet.
None of these are wrong. They each answer part of the question and then stop.
A snapshot, priced per scheme, usually months old by the time it informs a decision, and rarely revisited when the market moves.
They describe who lives nearby and what they earn. They do not describe what is already trading there, how well, or how people feel about it.
A comparable is chosen for its similarity to you. It says little about the specific street you are building on.
Two catchments with the same income profile can be completely different propositions: one already has nine coffee operators inside a five minute walk, the other has one. Demographic data will rate them the same. The count of what is actually trading, by category, is the part that decides whether your unit lets.
Category mix on its own is a description. The commercially useful version is comparative: which categories are well represented in a similar nearby area and thin or absent in yours. That difference is where an unmet demand argument can be evidenced rather than asserted.
Before a category empties out of a street, the reviews of the operators in it start describing the same problems. Reading that across a catchment gives you a read on which categories are under pressure locally, which is a different question from whether the sector is under pressure nationally.
How Workbench handles it
Draw the catchment you care about and collect every place inside it, rather than buying a report about a radius somebody else chose.
Compare that catchment against the areas you are benchmarking, so under-representation is a measured difference with a size attached.
Check a prospective anchor or tenant against the specific catchment before it goes into the model.
Re-run the same analysis later and get a comparable answer, because the method does not change between runs.
Every one of these is a standard report in Workbench. You ask in your own words and get the written report back, formatted to forward on without explaining it first.
What is actually trading in this catchment today?
Every place inside the boundary you drew, with the category mix, the rating distribution, and what customers say about the operators already there.
What is this catchment short of, compared with somewhere that works?
Your site against up to three reference areas, with the category gaps ranked and each one carrying its evidence. This is the report that turns an unmet demand argument into a number.
Does this brand belong in this scheme?
The brand judged against your catchment on competitors, audience, pricing and category fit, in a page you can put in front of a partner or a lender.
Sign up free, draw the boundary you actually care about, and ask the first question in a few minutes.
Get started freeAlso written for