Commercial location research
Guides that help you decide
before you sign a lease
48 research articles on Australian retail and hospitality locations — rent, competition, foot traffic, and due diligence.
You're Not Buying a Café. You're Buying Someone Else's Lease.
Every café for sale in Australia is advertised with a number. Takings of so much a week, adjusted net profit of so much a year, priced at some multiple of it. The number is usually…
Popular with operators
48 articles
Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane? We Analysed Where It’s Best to Start a Business
We score 336 suburbs across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane on the same model. The median restaurant suburb differs by on…
What Happens When Everyone Opens the Same Business in the Same Suburb?
Stand on a good strip, count seven cafés, and the conclusion feels obvious: the market is full, the demand is already di…
Where to Open a Business Near Melbourne: Three Highways, Two Good Answers
Every operator priced out of Melbourne looks at the same three highways. The Princes takes you …
Where Should You Open a Business Near Sydney? We Analysed 20 Towns
From the Illawarra to the Hunter, the Central West and the western frontier, we compared demand…
Where Would We Open a Café With $150,000?
Ask where to open a café with $150,000 and every answer stops at the same place: it depends on …
Why These 10 Brisbane Restaurants Get Location Right
Teneriffe and Bulimba sit 1.5 kilometres apart across the Brisbane River. Driving between them …
Why Your Landlord Wants You to Skip Due Diligence — Three of Their Five Tactics Are Already Void
A landlord is a counterparty, not a partner, and the lease process is designed by their side. T…
Why These 10 Melbourne Restaurants Get Location Right
Melbourne publishes more of its own foot traffic than any other Australian city: 134 sensor loc…
Why These 10 Perth Restaurants Get Location Right
Ten Perth restaurants. Ten different answers to one question: what is actually going to bring p…
Why These 10 Sydney Restaurants Get Location Right
Sydney counts the people on its own footpaths, twice a year, block by block, from six in the mo…
Before You Sign That Lease: A Commercial Checklist for Australian Restaurants and Cafés
Most Australian hospitality leases get signed after a solicitor has cleaned up the legal risk —…
Best Suburbs to Open a Restaurant in Sydney (2026 Precinct Guide)
In Sydney, the suburb decision is usually the largest financial bet in the plan. Fit-outs commo…
Best Perth Suburbs for a First-Time Cafe Owner (2026)
The best suburbs to open a cafe in Perth are not the same list for a first-time owner as they a…
Best Suburbs to Open a Cafe in Melbourne in 2026 (Ranked by Demand, Rent & Competition)
The best suburbs to open a cafe in Melbourne in 2026 are not the ones with the most people walk…
Best Suburbs to Open a Restaurant in Brisbane — Match Format to Precinct
“Best suburb” is the wrong question until we know your average spend, trading hours, and whethe…
Buy a Café or Build One? You're Choosing Whose Mistakes to Pay For
Ask a business broker whether you should buy an established café and the answer is yes. Ask a f…
The Café Business Plan Banks Actually Read Starts With the Address
Here is what happens to most café business plans: twelve pages on concept, brand story and menu…
Café Location Checklist for Australia: What to Verify Before You Sign
A café can have good coffee and still fail the lease. The checks that matter most happen before…
Would a Café Survive at 100 William Street, Perth?
Most cafe location decisions get made on instinct and a single visit. An operator walks a strip…
Coffee Shop Profitability in Australia: ATO Rent Bands and Modelled P&Ls (2026)
How much does an Australian café actually make? The useful answer is not a single national aver…
Commercial Rent Affordability Australia: Test All-In Occupancy Against Revenue
Affordability is not ‘cheap rent’. It is all-in occupancy cost against revenue the site can act…
Commercial rent per square metre across Australian capitals: a 2026 operator's reference
The most expensive shopfront rent in the country sits on Pitt Street Mall in Sydney, at roughly…
Australia's Fastest-Growing Suburbs Have a Retail Problem: New Residents Do Not Guarantee New Customers
Melton added 12,673 residents in a single year. Kwinana grew 4.6 per cent. Serpentine-Jarrahdal…
Foot traffic data for retail and hospitality: what actually matters, what's noise, and what nobody measures
A council technician once mounted two pedestrian counters on the same pole, facing the same str…
How Franchise Location Teams Choose Sites — And What Independents Can Copy
National franchise brands rarely pick sites on vibe alone. They run trade-area, traffic and ren…
How Much Do Café Owners Actually Make? Less Than the Listing Said, More Than the Horror Stories
Every number you have read about café owner income is describing someone else's café. Broker li…
How Much Foot Traffic Does a Café Actually Need?
“Find high foot traffic” is empty advice until you translate rent, ticket size and conversion i…
Melbourne Suburbs Where Café Location Risk Runs High — Model Archetypes
This is not a census of café closures by suburb. Where do cafes fail in Melbourne? Not, for the…
7 location metrics smart business owners check before signing a lease
Two operators sign leases in the same month, three suburbs apart, both opening a cafe in a tena…
Selling a Café: The Buyer Will Read Your Business the Way You Should Have
Every café sale is two stories about the same shop. The seller's story: years of work, a loyal …
Sydney's New 24-Hour Airport Opens 25 October. The Best Business Opportunity May Be One Train Stop Away.
At 11am on Sunday 25 October 2026, Jetstar is scheduled to operate the first commercial passeng…
Why Perth's Best Café Locations Work: A Data-Led Analysis of 10 Precincts
Why do certain Perth café locations keep filling seats while other operators struggle on the ne…
Australia’s CBDs Are Recovering. That Does Not Mean Your Format Should Open There Yet.
“The CBD is back” is doing a lot of work in leasing conversations right now. Parts of that stor…
Why most Australian cafes fail in their first 18 months (and what the location data actually shows about the cafe failure rate in Australia)
Of every 100 cafes, restaurants and takeaway businesses trading in June 2020, 54 were still tra…
Catchment analysis vs trade-area analysis: which one to use, and which one your competitors are getting wrong
Picture an operator standing over a laptop with a leasing agent, dropping a pin on a vacant ten…
The hidden cost of choosing the wrong suburb
The opening pattern below is a composite of common failure economics — not a named operator cas…
How Far Will Customers Actually Travel to Your Business? A Realistic Customer Catchment Area
A common leasing pitch drops a pin on a vacant shopfront, draws a 5 km circle around it, reads …
Gentrification Signals for Commercial Property: What Often Moves Before the Strip Reprices
In the 2016 Census, 36.1% of Footscray residents aged 15 and over held a bachelor degree or hig…
Gym Location Analysis Australia: How to Read Competition and Catchment Before You Lease
Gym and fitness tenancies compete for the same drive-by and walk-up catchments as every other l…
Why Busy Streets Often Create Failing Businesses
The most expensive lease an operator can sign is on a busy street where nobody stops. High foot…
Australia Is Building a New CBD by the Beach. That Does Not Mean Every Business Should Rush In.
Maroochydore has something almost no Australian business district can offer: a new centre being…
The Mistake That Kills Most New Australian Restaurants Is Not the Food
Post-mortems in Australian hospitality often blame the menu, the roster or the marketing. Those…
What Foot Traffic Data Doesn't Tell You
Foot traffic data is the most quoted number in a retail leasing conversation, and the one most …
Why a Cheaper Lease Can Be the More Expensive Location
The offer that feels safe is often the lower weekly number. Agents know this. So do tired found…
Why Melbourne's Best Café Locations Work: A Data-Led Analysis of 10 Precincts
Why do certain Melbourne café locations keep filling seats while other operators struggle on th…
$150,000 or $400,000? Why Nobody Can Quote Your Café Until They've Seen the Site
Search for what it costs to open a café in Australia and you will find a lot of confident numbe…
You've Found the Location. Now What? The Australian Small-Business Setup Checklist
Most guides to opening a business in Australia are organised by department. Register this with …
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