Retail Site Selection:

NY & CT | Salsa Fresca

Salsa Fresca, a growing fast-casual Mexican restaurant group, engaged Admiral Real Estate Services to help expand their presence in New York and Connecticut. To date, Admiral has helped Salsa Fresca find and open new locations in Danbury, CT, as well as Bedford Hills, Carmel, Cross River, Lagrangeville, Peekskill, Poughkeepsie and Yorktown, NY, growing the client’s presence within their target markets from 2 to 10 locations.

• The client needed help identifying underserved communities and locations, finding the best site(s) in a particular market, and working through LOI negotiations. The client also needed to ascertain that new sites did not cannibalize on the sales of existing or other planned locations.

• By helping the client find and open locations in Danbury, CT, as well as Bedford Hills, Carmel, Cross River, Lagrangeville, Peekskill, Poughkeepsie and Yorktown, NY, Admiral has helped grow the client’s presence within their target markets from 2 to 10 locations.
• Initially, Admiral met with the client to get an understanding of the client’s business and their short-term and long-term goals for growth, which included: (i) generating a composite of the target customer; (ii) understanding the P&L of existing stores and (iii) identifying indicators to help project future sales at a prospective location/market.
• Admiral identified possible sites within those target areas, including some locations not openly on the market. We then vetted each of the sites to see which met the client’s criteria, including size, visibility, minimum seating and preferred co-tenancy.
• Admiral engaged the landlords and/or leasing representative for each of the final sites to document and negotiate the business terms of the lease.
• Admiral leveraged their good relationships with the relevant municipalities to facilitate the permitting and approval process. For example, one of the client’s new locations required a change of use from a non-food to a food use. Because the property was on a septic system, the municipality required that the water use of all the tenants in the center be monitored for a period of time in order to get approval. Admiral worked very closely with the municipality in order to make that happen.