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Expansion teams

Score every candidate site on what is already around it

A lease runs for years and the data behind it usually describes a whole district. Sena reads the block: who else sells food within walking distance, at what price, and which cuisine the people living there say the area still misses.

Backed by NVIDIA Inception, Techstars, and Plug and Play. Every competitor in the count is a real storefront that was read, with the location and the date attached. A multi-step QA flow checks each signal before it becomes a decision.
The problem

The decision is an address. The data describes a district.

What Sena decides

Which candidate site scores highest on competition, local demand, and price viability, and what the menu should cost there.

Industries

QSRFast-CasualCoffee ChainsConvenienceFitness

Powered by

Sena, the Decision AI from Rwazi.

Decision AI with access to real-world data

The problem

A site decision runs for the length of a lease. The data behind it is usually shaped like a census tract.

The demographics describe a polygon

Population, income and age for an area drawn by a statistical office. The right shape for a report, and a wider shape than the corner you are signing for.

The traffic estimate describes a road

A count or a model for the street, which tells you how many people pass. It stays quiet on whether any of them want what you plan to sell.

The broker describes the property

Rent, frontage, co-tenancy, term. All accurate, and all about the box, where the decision turns on the trade it will do.

What the decision needs is the block. Who already sells food within walking distance, at what price, and which cuisine the people who live there say the area still misses. That is three questions about one address, and the three sources above answer none of them.

WHAT THE DATA DESCRIBES POPULATION INCOME · AGE SITE TRAFFIC PER STREET RENT, TERM NONE OF IT SAYS WHO SELLS FOOD HERE. THE BLOCK AROUND ONE ADDRESS $7.50 $9.00 $6.50 $8.00 5 MIN WALK STILL MISSED NOODLES THREE QUESTIONS ABOUT ONE ADDRESS
How it works

How Sena runs a restaurant site selection

01
WALK · COFFEE BAR DRIVE · HIGHWAY UNIT

Draw the trade area

Set the radius that matters for your format, which is a walk for a coffee bar and a drive for a highway unit. Everything after this is measured inside that boundary.

02
$7$9$6$8$5 5 INSIDE THE RADIUS PRICE, MENU, BUSY FROM REAL STOREFRONTS

Count the competition

Sena Computer Vision reads the foodservice operators inside the boundary: who they are, what they charge, what the menu shows, what condition the site is in, and how busy it looks. The result is a density figure built from real storefronts.

03
STILL MISSED: NOODLES PAY: $6 TO $9 A MEAL TRAVEL: UP TO 10 MIN

Learn what locals want

Sena Consumer Activity asks people who live and work there what they eat, what they pay, how far they travel for food, and which cuisine they still miss nearby.

04
RANKED SHORTLIST SITE 4SITE 1SITE 7 867152 COMPETITION · DEMAND FIT · PRICE

Score the sites

Sena returns a composite for each candidate: competitive intensity inside the radius, how well local demand matches your concept, whether your price point holds against what is already charged, and the demand it estimates. Candidates come back ranked.

05
NEW RIVAL Q1Q2Q3Q4 SEEN WHILE THE RESPONSE STILL MATTERS

Watch after opening

The same reads repeat on a cycle, so a new competitor inside the radius or a shift in local demand shows up while the response still matters.

Rank your candidate sites before the lease is signed

See how Sena scores a trade area →
Industries served

Industries and Rwazi capabilities involved

QSRFast-Casual & Casual DiningCoffee & Beverage ChainsConvenience StoresFitness & WellnessRetail

the radius that matters changes with the format. A coffee bar competes with everything a customer can reach on foot, and a drive-through competes along a route. The same read applies to both, and the boundary is what differs.

Check out Rwazi and Sena capabilities

CapabilityRole in this use case
Sena Computer VisionCore. It reads every foodservice operator inside the trade area: brand, location, menu prices where they are posted, format, and site condition. This is the competitive density figure, built by reading the streets.
Sena Consumer ActivityCore. It collects local preference from people who live and work in the trade area: what they eat, what they pay, how far they travel, and what the area still misses.
Sena (Decision AI)Core. It scores each candidate site across competition, demand fit, and price viability, ranks the shortlist, and reads it against how your existing locations perform.
Sena Connect and IntegrationsCore. Brings in your existing location performance, your unit economics, your site criteria, and the candidate pipeline, by CSV or Excel upload.

Both reads happen inside the boundary you draw, which is what makes the score about the site, where a city figure averages it away.

The gap

What sits within walking distance

01

What your current process gives you

AREA STREET PROPERTY REAL INPUTS, WIDER THAN THE SITE

Demographics for the area, a traffic estimate for the street, a broker’s read on the property, and the pattern-matching of a team who know the format. Real inputs, all at a wider resolution than the decision.

02

What Sena adds

4 COMPETITORS STILL MISSED AT THE RESOLUTION OF THE BLOCK

The competitor count inside your radius with their prices, and what the people living there say the area still misses. Both at the resolution of the block.

03

What that changes

SITE 4 · SIGN SITE 1 SITE 9 SITE 10 MENU $8.50 CUT BEFORE ANYBODY VISITS

Which site you sign, what the menu costs there, and which candidates come off the list before anybody visits them.

Ask Sena

SENA
Recent
Shortlist · 10 sites
Site 4 trade area
Menu price check

Data connected 3/4

✓Location list
✓Sales by site
✓Menu and prices
Lease terms
Candidates 10 Radius 1 mi Storefronts read 640
How many direct competitors sit inside a one-mile radius of this candidate site, and how does that compare with my best-performing locations?

Sena

11 direct competitors sit inside one mile of this site, against an average of 6 around your five best-performing locations. Three of them match your price point.
This site
11 Network average
8 Best-location average
6 Same price point here
3
Traced to storefront capture + your location list6 wk
Widen Site 4 to a drive radius Compare Site 4 with Site 1
Shortlist.xlsx Sites

Illustrative interface. Numbers are an example, not a Rwazi result.

Who uses it

Roles and functions

Real estate and development

The core user. Sign sites on a scored shortlist, with the competitive count and the local demand behind each one.

Strategy solutions →

Strategy and business development

Choose which cities and neighbourhoods to enter, and in what order.

Operations

Watch the trade area around existing locations, and see a new competitor while there is still time to respond.

Local marketing

Build the local message from what people in that trade area said about the category.

Menu development

Adapt the menu and the price to the market, using local preference, where the national template flattens it.

Innovation solutions →

Why teams trust Sena

01

Get decision-ready answers fast

A demo takes about 20 minutes. For most use cases, the first decisions land days after kickoff.

02

The count is of real storefronts

Competitive density comes from reading the streets inside your boundary, so a closed unit or a new opening shows up as it is, where a directory records it late.

03

The read repeats after opening

The same measurement runs on a cycle, so the trade area you signed for stays measured through the term.

20-min live walkthrough

Talk to Sena about the sites on your shortlist and what surrounds them

Tell us the decision you are weighing, and we will bring the market read to the conversation.

Watch a live demo of Sena Decision AI
See this use case run on a market like yours
Get the questions from your own team answered

Start from your own question

Bring the decision in front of you and we will run the first read against it on the call.

Talk to the Rwazi team

FAQs

01 What is restaurant site selection?
Restaurant site selection is the work of choosing where to open, using the trade area as well as the address. Site selection for restaurant formats turns on three things: how much competition already sits inside the radius your customers will travel, whether local demand matches your concept, and whether your price point survives what is already charged nearby. The lease term is what makes it consequential, since a weak site stays weak for years.
02 What is a restaurant site selection analysis?
A restaurant site selection analysis scores each candidate as well as describing it. The useful version produces a ranked shortlist with a reason attached to each position: this site has four direct competitors inside the radius and local demand skewed toward a cuisine outside your menu, that site has one competitor and a price ceiling above your target. Sena builds the score from a competitor read inside the boundary and a consumer read among the people who live there.
03 What are the restaurant site selection criteria?
Restaurant site selection criteria demographics foot traffic competition and co-tenancy make up the standard list, usually with rent and visibility alongside. The three that decide performance are competitive density inside the travelled radius, demand fit against the concept, and price viability. The others describe the property and the area, which matters and sits at a wider resolution than the site itself.
04 How do you measure competitive density around a site?
Set the radius your format competes within, then count the operators inside it, where a postcode count reaches wider. Direct competitors matter most, and adjacent formats count too, since a coffee bar loses trade to a bakery. The count is only useful if it reflects current reality, which means reading the streets, where a listing lags openings and closures.
05 How do you know whether local demand fits your concept?
Ask the people who live and work in the trade area. What they eat now, what they pay, how far they travel for a meal, and which cuisine or format they say the area misses. A trade area with high traffic and satisfied demand is a harder site than a quieter one with an obvious gap, and traffic data alone reports the first and stays silent on the second.
06 How should menu pricing be set for a new market?
Start from what is already charged inside the radius, then check it against what local consumers say they expect to pay for the category. Those two numbers set the range, and your unit economics decide where inside it you sit. Transplanting the national price into a market with a lower local ceiling produces a site that performs against plan and under potential.
07 What happens after the site opens?
The trade area keeps moving. A new competitor inside the radius, a price shift among the operators already there, or a change in what locals want all affect a site that was scored correctly at signing. Running the same reads on a cycle turns the site score into something maintained, where the approval paper stops at signing.