Mapping Tenant Expansion and Trade Area Gaps

Welcome back to On The Ground, your CRE newsletter powered by DealGround.

Over the last few weeks, QSR Magazine has highlighted several tenants with serious plans for growth in 2026. Three stood out:

• Black Rock Coffee Bar

• Dutch Bros

• Zaxby’s

Different categories. Different models.

But the same thing jumped out to us: disciplined expansion that shows up clearly on a map.

So we did what we always do.

We opened DealGround and looked at where they actually are, and more importantly, where they aren’t. What we found were clean patterns, visible gaps, and very real prospecting opportunities hiding in plain sight.

Black Rock Coffee Roasters

The opportunity isn’t guessing which new state comes next. It’s identifying these properties before anyone else:

• Infill gaps inside existing MSAs

• Adjacent submarkets just outside current clusters

• Trade areas that match a drive-thru, speed-focused model but haven’t been filled yet

Dutch Bros

Dutch Bros expansion tends to reveal:

• New-market entries where awareness is still early

• Suburban trade areas that support drive-thru volume plus mobile pickup

• MSAs where competitors are present, but Dutch Bros coverage is still light

Zaxby’s

The next phase of growth is likely to appear:

• Regions outside of the Southeast, its historic core

• In higher-cost or denser markets enabled by smaller formats

• In trade areas where chicken demand is already proven, but Zaxby's coverage is thin

We wrote up what we found, including the tenant maps, data points, and how we’d turn these insights into call lists using DealGround.

If you are a developer, broker or investor, this is worth a few minutes of your time.

 👉 Read the full article: Mapping Tenant Expansion and Trade Area Gaps

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It’s about having the data to see it clearly and acting faster than everyone else.

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Happy hunting. LFG!

The DealGround Team