Why this is not a mapping problem
A franchise territory is sold. It appears in the FDD, it is priced, and it is enforceable. When a franchisor grants an overlapping area, the result is not a bad analysis. It is an encroachment dispute with a franchisee who paid for exclusivity.
That raises the standard of proof. A three-mile radius drawn on a map is easy to attack. A catchment computed on the road network is not.
What the tools do
| Platform | What it is | Published price |
|---|---|---|
| Placer.ai | Foot-traffic panel; visits, dwell, YoY | $31,000/yr (Bloomington, IN contract) |
| Buxton / Audiense In-Person | Consulting practice; psychographic segmentation | $40,000/yr (same comparison) |
| SiteZeus (Atlas) | Franchise and multi-unit site scoring | Custom quote |
| Tango Analytics | Portfolio and facilities management | CAD $24,924–49,403/yr |
| GrowthFactor | Self-serve site scoring | From $200/mo, one seat |
| Narrative Geo | Routed drive-time trade areas, 107 chains, chain-wide | Talk to us |
Questions to ask any vendor
- Is the boundary a radius, a drive-time estimate, or routed on the actual road network?
- Can it show overlap between existing franchisees, not just around one site?
- Can it compute the whole system at once, or one address at a time?
- Does it need our historical sales data before it can produce anything?
- Is the underlying figure a measurement or an extrapolation from a device sample?
Narrative Geo does not sample. Every trade area is routed on the actual road network with OSRM, against full Census/ACS population and a maintained POI set. The drive-time matrix is precomputed at 1.08 billion rows, so a national query across a 20,000-store chain returns in seconds rather than being metered per location.