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faqs

What is this?

A site-finding engine for hospitality operators. Instead of waiting for agents to send you sites, it starts from every restaurant, bar and pub premises in London — about 40,000 — and scores each one against your group's DNA: the size, pitch and neighbourhood profile of the sites you already run.

Where does the data come from?

Seventeen public datasets, joined at the premises: the food-hygiene register, Land Registry ownership, the VOA rating list, council empty-rates records, insolvency notices, Companies House, EPCs, planning constraints, licensing, census and transport data. Nothing scraped, nothing bought — and one key insight: a site that has closed still shows, because closed sites are exactly what a buyer wants to see.

How fresh is it?

Each source refreshes on its own cadence — insolvency notices daily, rates and planning weekly, ownership and EPCs monthly. Live agency listings feed in by email as they're sent out, which is how a venue gets its "on the market" flag.

What am I looking at on the map?

Warm dots are venues, coloured by DNA fit. Blue dots are the demo operator's own sites. Click any dot for the full picture: size, rateable value, tenure, availability signals, and links to walk the street. The signals — empty rates, insolvency, financial stress, ageing ownership — answer the question that matters: is it gettable?

What's a guided report?

The deep dive on one site, told as a walk-in: the map flies from all of London down to the front door while the story unfolds — the signal, the site, who owns it, who the people are, and the move. See the sample — a Covent Garden corner the engine flagged before it was marketed.

Why doesn't the map name the owners?

Land Registry licence terms restrict republishing the ownership dataset in bulk, so the map shows tenure and whether a title match exists. The per-site brief names the owner in full — that's a public record, looked up one site at a time.

Is my DNA shared?

No. One operator's DNA, one map. Your sites, your criteria and your shortlists aren't visible to anyone else — this isn't a marketplace.

What does it cost?

It's a working prototype, open while it's being built. If you run a group and want your own DNA on this map — or a guided report on a site you're circling — email birdandy@me.com.

Who built it?

Andy Bird — ex-hospitality group founder who spent ten years finding sites the slow way. The longer story.

Open the live map →