Restaurant location scouting checklist for India — what to test

About this piece. The single most common reason a restaurant fails in India is not menu, not staff, not marketing — it's site. A weak site forces every downstream decision to compensate. This piece is the operator-grade location scouting checklist: 38 items across catchment, footfall, technical feasibility, lease commercials, and the soft signals you only catch by spending time on the pavement at three different hours. Don't sign a lease without working through every section.

The 38 items, grouped into 5 sections

Section A is catchment + footfall. Section B is F&B density + competition. Section C is technical feasibility — hood, exhaust, power, water. Section D is lease commercials. Section E is the soft signals.

Numbers and tests are India-context, drawn from operator experience across NCR, MH, KA, and TG.

A. Catchment + footfall (10 items)

The site has to have the customer before any of the other tests matter.

1. Catchment radius defined. QSR: 1–2 km. Casual dining: 3–5 km. Fine-dine: 5–10 km. Map it.
2. Population in catchment. Target SEC A/B+ households for casual dining, ≥15,000 in catchment.
3. Daytime vs evening occupancy. Office-heavy catchments fall off after 8pm; residential catchments fall off after 11pm. Both matter for your hours.
4. Footfall count — weekday morning (8–11am). Stand and count for 30 minutes at the frontage.
5. Footfall count — weekday lunch (12–3pm). Same.
6. Footfall count — weekend evening (6–9pm). Same.
7. Anchor tenants in 200m radius. Big retail, multiplex, college, hospital — these drive predictable spikes.
8. Public transport access. Metro within 500m, auto stand within 200m. Lifts catchment by 30–50%.
9. Vehicle access from main road. U-turn distance, signal proximity. Hard left-turn-only sites lose ~15% drive-by capture.
10. Visibility from main road. Frontage seen from 50m+ at driving speed. If not, signage budget grows 2x.

B. F&B density + competition (8 items)

The "is there an existing restaurant cluster" test is one of the most useful and most counter-intuitive checks.

1. F&B density in 200m. Count active restaurants. 8–15 = healthy cluster. Below 4 = test the catchment hypothesis. Above 25 = saturated, only differentiated formats survive.
2. Direct competitor mapping. If you're QSR burger, count burger QSRs in 1km. 0 = test demand. 1–2 = healthy. 4+ = differentiate sharply or move on.
3. Adjacent format mix. Cafés + bars + casual dining beside you = good. All same-format = bad.
4. Visit each competitor twice. Once weekday lunch, once weekend evening. Count covers, average ticket.
5. Talk to 3 nearby operators. "How's the area been the last 12 months?" — opinions vary, the spread itself is the signal.
6. Recent F&B turnover in 200m. If 3 outlets shut in the last 12 months, there's a story. Find it.
7. Delivery aggregator density check. Open Swiggy / Zomato in the location. Count active restaurants. Cross-check with the on-foot count — gap reveals dine-in vs delivery skew.
8. Mall / high-street rent benchmark. Get last 5 quoted rents in 100m. Yours should sit inside that band.

C. Technical feasibility (8 items)

The technical checks are where deals die. A great catchment with no exhaust route is no deal.

1. Hood + exhaust route. Where does the kitchen exhaust terminate? Roof access? Society NOC required? Estimated cost 3–8L if difficult.
2. Power load available. 25–35 KVA needed for 50-cover. Check sanctioned load + cost of additional load.
3. Water supply + pressure. Continuous supply or tanker-dependent? Storage tank capacity required.
4. Sewage + grease trap routing. Mandatory for FSSAI clearance.
5. Floor load capacity. First floor / mezzanine — kitchen equipment + customer load. Get a structural certificate.
6. Toilet position + ventilation. Mandatory separate toilets per municipal rules; some sites need civil intervention.
7. Fire safety compliance. Building height drives requirement; multi-storey building has different stack.
8. Society / RWA NOC for commercial use. The single most common deal-killer in residential-converted commercial premises. Get it in writing before negotiating rent.

D. Lease commercials (8 items)

The lease is where the worst surprises happen at month 18, not month 1.

1. Rent per sqft benchmark. Should be inside the local market band. Outliers either way are a story.
2. Carpet vs built-up area in the rent. Built-up adds 18–25% to true cost; clarify in the lease.
3. Security deposit. Standard 6–12 months of rent. Higher = bargaining lever exists.
4. Lock-in period. Standard 36 months. Shorter favours you; longer favours landlord.
5. Rent escalation clause. Standard 5% per year. Some landlords push 8–10%; push back.
6. Maintenance / CAM split. Mall locations especially — CAM can be 20–30% on top of rent.
7. Exit clause. What happens at month 12 if it's not working? Forfeiture of deposit? Notice period?
8. Renewal terms. Right of first refusal at year 3? At what rent revision?

The two clauses to negotiate hardest are exit clause and renewal terms. The exit clause is your downside protection; the renewal is your upside protection. Most first-time operators fight on rent and concede on these.

E. Soft signals (4 items)

The four checks you do with your feet, your phone, and your judgement.

1. Walk the site at 3 different hours. Morning, lunch, evening. Notice cleanliness, lighting, noise, security presence.
2. Order delivery from the address. See how delivery riders find it; verify GPS accuracy of the pin.
3. Check Google Reviews of nearby F&B. Recurring complaints about parking, smell, noise, or safety mean your operations will inherit the same.
4. Sleep on it for 48 hours. First-time operators commit to sites in week one of scouting because it feels urgent. Sites are abundant; the urgency is constructed by the broker.

A scoring sheet you can copy

For each of the 38 items, score 1–3 (fail / pass / strong). A site that scores below 75/114 is a tilt-no. Above 95 is tilt-yes. The 75–95 zone is where judgement dominates the framework.

Section C's threshold is hard — failing technical feasibility is a kill, not a tilt. A site can be brilliant on catchment and dead on hood routing.

What the broker won't tell you

Three site-level facts that experienced brokers usually don't surface unless asked directly:

1. Why the previous tenant left. "Their format didn't work" is usually false. "Their lease expired and they renewed elsewhere at lower rent" is the real story 60% of the time.
2. Pending society / municipal disputes. A site with an active dispute can be sealed with 7 days notice. Get a no-litigation declaration.
3. The next door / adjacent tenant pipeline. A site next to a soon-to-open competitor of yours is a different deal than a site next to a complementary tenant.

Ask all three explicitly. The answers will sharpen your offer.

How to use this in week one of scouting

A 2-hour walking visit per shortlisted site, followed by a 1-hour scoring session at home, gets you through 5 sites in a week. Cut the bottom 2 immediately. The top 2 get a second visit at a different hour. The winner gets the technical feasibility audit by a paid consultant before any term sheet conversation begins.

Related on Restaurant Daily

• Restaurant pre-opening checklist (India) — 84 items
• Restaurant cost breakdown in India
• Cloud kitchen vs dine-in restaurant in India