The Challenge

Saladworks is a 32-year-old create your own salad restaurant concept with locations in 13 states. It came to CBRE looking for a real estate advisor to help target locations for its corporate and franchise national expansion and then to execute leases in those locations. 

The Solution

CBRE’s Transaction Services Group partnered with Forum Analytics to complete a real estate forecasting solution to help identify new markets for development, determine market saturation limits and to estimate sales potential that would analyze the health of existing locations. Forum conducted trade area and customer lifestyle analyses to develop a forecasting model to help create a national development blueprint for Saladworks. After analyzing over 61,000 potential sites, Forum identified 579 prospective markets with high sales potential and more than $500 million in potential net revenue. It prioritized 15 new development markets including Dallas and Atlanta, and the Saladworks team chose to target those areas for their initial expansion. With Forum’s data, Mary Hinton and her team partnered with local brokers in each market to find the best sites and negotiate terms. CBRE’s local market intelligence and relationships allowed Saladworks early access to off-market properties. Mary and her team have negotiated 8 leases in Atlanta, Dallas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.