I live, voluntarily, in one of the most remote and unpopulated parts of the country (see below). We have one fern-bar/restaurant - Applebees. It appear to the casual observer to be a goldmine. We often wonder around here why no other chain restaurant has figured out that this is a good market.
The answer is towards the end of this article. Applebees has got their managerial economics down so well that they feel they can succeed in markets as small as 20,000 people. I am not a local development person, but I do work closely with some of them, and I hear frequently that retail operations are looking for something more like 80,000 people as the take-off point. We get by with less because we are on the interstate goint between Las Vegas and Denver or Salt Lake City. But, still our Applebees is a monopolist in its class.
So, how remote and small is Cedar City, Utah? Well, let me first say that this is a booming college/festival/destination town that is a real gem if you can handle the isolation. We have (generously) 25K in town, and 5K students part of the year. There are no suburbs to speak off. The nearest big place at just over 50K is ultra-booming St. George 45 minutes down the interstate. Other than that it is 2 hours to the outskirts of Las Vegas and 2.5 to get to The Strip. Going the other way it is 3 hours to Provo and just under 4 to get to downtown Salt Lake. Where I grew up, a 4 hour drive got you Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland, Hamilton, London, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Erie, Rochester, Syracuse, and Binghamton - 3 of those are still bigger than Las Vegas, and 5-6 are bigger than Salt Lake.
Via Newmark's Door.
Comments