Grep · sample report

Location Analysis — A comparison of candidate locations on demand, competition, costs, talent, incentives and risks.

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Inputs used for this sample
Location Analysis

Business type: specialty coffee roastery

Candidate cities or areas: Austin, Denver, Raleigh

Specialty Coffee Roastery: Raleigh Edges Austin and Denver, but the Margin Is Thin

Bottom line

I recommend Raleigh (Raleigh-Cary metro) as the first roastery location, with Austin as runner-up and Denver a close third. Raleigh wins on cost: its all-occupation mean wage is $34.01 an hour, the lowest of the three, North Carolina's corporate income tax is a 2.0% flat rate, the lowest top rate in the Tax Foundation's 2026 table, and its metro grew 2.6% from 2023 to 2024. Denver has the biggest and richest customer base but the highest labor costs, including a $19.29 city minimum wage in 2026. Austin shows the highest retail asking rent ($31.39 in CoStar data), though brokers define rent differently. The weighted scores are close (Raleigh 3.55, Austin 3.20, Denver 3.10 out of 5), and a demand-heavy weighting flips the winner to Denver, so treat this as a tilt, not a verdict.

The biggest gap is that I found no industrial or flex rents, no roaster-specific air-permit rules for Austin or Denver, and no FEMA or crime data. A roastery needs production space, so retail rents are only a proxy for the cafe or tasting-room side.

Interpretations made

Scored comparison: Raleigh 3.55, Austin 3.20, Denver 3.10

Scores run from 1 (worst) to 5 (best) for a roastery. Weights sum to 100%. Weighted total = sum of (score x weight). All scores are my inference from the sourced data below. Factors with thin data get a neutral 3.

Factor Weight Austin Denver Raleigh
Real estate cost and availability 20% 2 4 3
Labor cost 15% 4 2 5
Demand and demographics 15% 4 5 3
Competition (less crowded scores higher) 15% 3 2 4
Taxes and incentives 10% 4 2 4
Regulation and permits 10% 3 3 3
Transport and access 10% 3 3 3
Risk 5% 3 3 3
Weighted total 100% 3.20 3.10 3.55

Sensitivity (derived): with demand raised to 30%, real estate cut to 15%, labor to 10% and competition to 10%, the totals become Denver 3.45, Raleigh 3.40 and Austin 3.35. The ranking is therefore sensitive to how much you value proximity to customers over operating cost.

Demand: Denver is largest and richest, Raleigh grows fastest

Denver has the biggest, highest-income market, Austin sits in the middle, and Raleigh is smallest but growing quickest. Household income differs by source: the broker reports use Oxford Economics (Q2 2026), and Census Reporter uses the 2024 American Community Survey (ACS) one-year estimates. Raleigh has no broker-sourced equivalent in what I retrieved.

Metric Austin Denver Raleigh Source
Population (Oxford, Q2 2026) 2,661,126 3.09 million n/a (ACS 2024: 1,562,009) Matthews, Census Reporter
Median household income (Oxford, Q2 2026) $104,181 $112,301 n/a Matthews
Median household income (ACS 2024) $99,897 $108,046 $102,144 Census Reporter
Per capita income (ACS 2024) $59,403 $60,408 $54,982 Census Reporter
Population growth, 2023 to 2024 2.3% n/a 2.6% Census Bureau, 17 Apr 2025
Unemployment (Q2 2026) 3.5% 4.0% n/a Matthews

Reading the table: Denver's roughly 6% income edge over Raleigh on the ACS basis (108,046 versus 102,144, my arithmetic) matters for premium bag sales and cafe pricing. Raleigh's metro is about half Denver's size on the population figures shown, so its home market is smaller even if it grows faster. A roastery that sells wholesale and online depends less on any single metro's size than a cafe does (Inference).

Competition: Raleigh looks least crowded, but counts are not comparable

I found no like-for-like count of roasters. The three sources below use different methods, so treat the figures as leads.

Inference: Denver's directory count is the largest and best documented, and Raleigh's is the smallest, so I scored Raleigh least crowded. A direct Google Maps or state-registry count per 100,000 residents would settle this.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Competition favors Raleigh only on weak evidence; verify with a consistent local count before relying on it.

Costs: rents are not comparable across brokers, so wages and taxes decide

Retail rents depend on which broker you read, because Matthews reports CoStar asking rents while Colliers and Lee report triple-net (NNN) rates. Only one pair is like for like: Lee reports Denver at $27.76 NNN and Raleigh at $28.68 NNN, so Raleigh is not cheaper than Denver on that basis. Austin has only the Matthews figure.

Metric (Q2 2026) Austin Denver Raleigh-Durham Source
Asking rent, Matthews/CoStar ($/SF) $31.39 $20.96 n/a Matthews, 18 Aug and 30 Jul 2026
Asking rent, NNN ($/SF) n/a $27.76 (Lee) $24.80 (Colliers); $28.68 (Lee) Lee, Colliers
Retail vacancy 3.4% 4.4% 2.59% (Colliers); 2.9% (Lee) as linked
Small-format vacancy (under 10,000 SF) n/a n/a about 1.56% Colliers
Industrial or flex rent n/a n/a n/a not found
Mean hourly wage, all occupations (May 2025) $35.85 $39.28 $34.01 BLS OEWS
Mean hourly wage, food preparation and serving (May 2025) $16.50 $21.46 $16.61 BLS OEWS
Local minimum wage n/a $19.29 (2026); $19.84 from 1 Jan 2027 n/a Denver city
Combined sales tax 8.25% 9.15% general; 8.00% prepared food and drink 7.25% (Wake County) as linked (Austin figure is from an aggregator)
State corporate income tax n/a (see franchise tax below) 4.40% 2.0% Tax Foundation, 2026
Property tax n/a n/a 53.71 cents per $100, Wake County, FY2027 (county only; up 2 cents) Wake County

Three points matter. First, the Denver spread ($20.96 CoStar versus $27.76 NNN) shows why no single rent should drive the decision. Second, Austin's Matthews figure comes with 3.5 million SF under construction and 1.3% annual rent growth, so rents are rising slowly. Third, Texas's main business tax is the franchise tax: the no-tax-due threshold is $2,650,000 of revenue, with a 0.375% rate for retail or wholesale and 0.75% for other businesses (report year 2026). A small roaster below that threshold would likely owe none (Inference; confirm your classification with the Comptroller).

Denver also layers a high wage floor on top of the highest market wages. Its food-service mean of $21.46 is about 30% above Austin's $16.50 (my arithmetic), which matters for a cafe front but less for a few production roasters.

Talent: Raleigh and Austin are cheaper to staff, and Denver is dearer for counter roles

A roastery hires roasters, packers, drivers, and baristas if it runs a cafe. BLS publishes no separate barista or roaster wage by metro. The closest official category is food preparation and serving, shown above. One third-party summary of BLS data puts the Austin counter-worker median at $14.09 an hour and the mean at $14.49, below the $15.00 national median (May 2025 data; secondary source). I found no equivalent verified figures for Denver or Raleigh (n/a). Raleigh scores 5 and Austin 4 on labor because Raleigh has the lowest all-occupation mean ($34.01 against Austin's $35.85), even though Austin's food-service mean ($16.50) is a cent or so below Raleigh's ($16.61); the scoring weighs both. For higher-paid roles, Denver's mean wage across all occupations is $39.28 against $34.01 in Raleigh, a gap of about 15% (my arithmetic).

Unemployment: 3.5% in Austin and 4.0% in Denver (Q2 2026, via Matthews). Raleigh is n/a. Hiring difficulty for roasters specifically is n/a for all three; verify through local job-posting counts.

Incentives: Raleigh offers the clearest small-business grants, Denver's zones are being redrawn

None of these was verified as open to a coffee roaster. Treat all as leads for the economic development offices.

Regulation and permits: zoning looks workable in Raleigh, the others are unverified

Transport and access: little verified data

Austin-Bergstrom had its third-busiest year on record in 2025 (KVUE, 4 February 2026; passenger count not retrieved). Denver's airport page describes A Line trains running between Denver Airport Station and Union Station. Mean commute times (ACS 2024) are 28.2 minutes in Austin, 27.7 in Denver and 27.4 in Raleigh. Highway, rail and port access are n/a for all three, so all score a neutral 3.

Risks: thin evidence on hazards, clearer evidence on market conditions

Risk Location Severity (my judgment) Source
New retail supply: 3.5 million SF under construction Austin Medium Matthews, Q2 2026
Highest asking rent of the three in CoStar-based data (definitions differ by broker) Austin Medium Matthews, Q2 2026
Rising wage floor: $19.29 now, $19.84 from 2027 Denver Medium to high City of Denver
Net absorption of -6,000 SF in Q2 and 5.9% vacancy in the Central submarket Denver Low to medium Matthews, Q2 2026
Scarce small spaces: about 1.56% vacancy under 10,000 SF, and overall vacancy up from 2.5% to 2.9% in one quarter (Lee) Raleigh Medium Colliers, Lee
Natural hazards (FEMA National Risk Index) All n/a not retrieved
Crime statistics All n/a not retrieved

Recommendation and next steps

Raleigh wins if cost control and a growing mid-size market matter most: lowest all-occupation wages, a 2.0% state corporate tax, 2.6% growth and grant programs aimed at storefronts. It still carries a real risk of finding a small production or cafe space quickly.

Denver wins if customer income and market size matter most, as the sensitivity case shows (3.45 against Raleigh's 3.40 and Austin's 3.35), and if you mainly sell wholesale and can absorb a $21.46 food-service mean wage.

Austin wins if you want a large, fast-growing, high-income market with moderate labor costs and a franchise tax that small firms may not owe, and you can tolerate the highest retail rents reported.

Verify on the ground

Data gaps: Raleigh unemployment and broker-sourced demographics; Denver and Raleigh barista wages; Austin and Denver property tax; state minimum wages for Texas and North Carolina; FEMA and crime data; airport traffic for Denver and Raleigh; permit timelines; coffee-shop density; Austin NNN rent. Figures are all from 2025 or 2026, so none is older than two years.

Sources