Bankable feasibility in an expansion year: turning headlines into finance-ready numbers

Specialty retail and foodservice chains continue to add units across suburban corridors, with recent openings and commitments spanning outdoor retail, quick service, and convenience fueling in new markets. Growth stories like these are the why now. The what to do is clear: every new site needs a bankable feasibility study with a defensible five-year sales projection that underwrites the decision and secures capital on favorable terms.

What makes a feasibility study bankable today

Banks and boards expect more than a map and a demographic ring. They want empirical traffic, unbiased modeling, transparent assumptions, and validation. C-Site was built for this standard.

Precision traffic at the exact address: C-Site measures directional AADT on primary and secondary roads, plus adjacent highways and offramps, with intraday patterns down to 15-minute bins, weekday versus weekend splits, monthly seasonality, speed distribution, congestion, and rush hour analysis. Reports are current within about one week and are produced for the precise street address rather than a ZIP code or miles-long segment, avoiding the distortions that come from "nearby" counters.
Local versus transit differentiation: Footfall potential hinges on driver intention, not just volume. C-Site analyzes speed profiles and maneuverability to classify transit behavior versus shopping behavior. As Brodski, Kozakevich, and Stepanyan describe in Traffic Monitoring As a Tool For Operation Excellence Control, lower speeds driven by accessible road geometry indicate favorable conditions for stopping, while consistent high speeds point to pass-through traffic. This separation feeds the conversion logic in our projections.
Validated accuracy you can put in front of a lender: In a field test across five states and 50 road segments, covering 1,750 measurements over a full year, Ticon's traffic estimation achieved an average accuracy of 91.79%, with an average AADT error of 8.31%, and 80.7% accuracy at 90% confidence. A separate Ohio use case showed only 8.05% discrepancy versus a DOT detector located 0.7 miles away, and it documented that a shift of just 700 feet can change observed traffic by more than 40%. These figures explain why "exact address" matters for underwriting.

From traffic to a defendable five-year sales projection

C-Site's Feasibility Study and Sales Projection follow a consistent, metrics-based methodology that turns observed traffic into category revenues over a five-year horizon.

Site and trade area profile: We compile site features that influence capture rate and operating performance, including visibility, signalized access, speed fall, nearby points of interest, people per competitor, and income ratio. Community Profile demographics quantify purchasing power and trends. In many locations we also provide an accessibility population metric, for example 40,310 people within a 15-minute reach in a Pennsylvania case study, to contextualize demand.
Traffic normalization and capture: Directional AADT is adjusted for seasonality and day-part peaks using intraday 15-minute distributions. We apply visitor rate and adjusted AADT to estimate potential customers per month, explicitly differentiating shopping-behavior traffic from transit-behavior traffic.
Competition and Level of Service: We inventory competitors within 3, 5, and 8 miles, calculate market saturation and Level of Service, and produce a site ranking so lenders can compare alternatives on a single scale.
Revenue modeling by stream: Demand is translated into in-store, fuel, and car wash forecasts where relevant, with category mix for in-store, plus fuel demand distribution by grade. The output is a five-year projection by stream with assumptions that are traceable back to measured traffic and trade area spending.
Sensitivity and ramp-up: Because C-Site keeps hourly, daily, and monthly traffic patterns, we model opening ramps and sensitivities around capture rate, competition entries, and seasonality to show lenders the downside and the operating plan to mitigate it.

Why this matters for today's expansion decisions

Retail site selection and investment appraisal: A metrics-based site ranking anchored in validated traffic reduces selection risk, particularly in suburban and exurban corridors where a 700-foot move can swing volumes by 40% and shift the lender's view of coverage ratios.
Workforce planning and operational control: The same analysis supports staffing and procurement. C-Site's traffic load heat map and by-hour distributions align labor with demand, which is central to the first year of operations when profitability depends on disciplined scheduling.
Marketing and revenue optimization: Intraday and weekday versus weekend patterns identify lunch, evening, and commuter peaks, so opening promotions and ongoing campaigns hit when capture probability is highest.

What you receive in a C-Site bankable package

- Feasibility Study: Data-driven location assessment, a metrics-based site ranking, estimated number of potential customers, competitive supply and Level of Service, traffic analysis for all road directions, a Local Customer Profile with purchasing power and trends, and a five-year sales projection across product categories.
- Sales Projection report: A focused deliverable when a full market evaluation is not required, including site features and ranking, market demand analysis for fuel, in-store, and car wash with five-year projections, competition analysis with Level of Service, directional AADT, and a Trade Area demographic report.

A practical blueprint for your next site
1) Establish the traffic baseline at the exact curb cut with directional AADT, 15-minute intraday profiles, and seasonality.
2) Separate local shopping-behavior flow from transit using speed and maneuverability indicators.
3) Convert adjusted AADT to potential customers per month via visitor rate.
4) Quantify competition and Level of Service within 3, 5, and 8 miles, then rank candidate sites.
5) Produce a five-year revenue projection by stream with explicit assumptions and sensitivity bands.
6) Attach operations schedules using hourly traffic heat maps to show how the plan supports the forecast.

Headlines about new units opening in secondary markets will continue. The differentiator will be who arrives with finance-ready feasibility that is grounded in precise traffic, transparent assumptions, and audited accuracy. That is what turns site selection from a narrative into a bankable plan. If you need a defendable feasibility study and a five-year sales projection for an upcoming site, C-Site is built to meet lender and board standards with evidence and clarity.