Use case
Grow a chain or franchise across cities
You run several stores, or sell franchises, and need to know which markets have room, how far each store reaches, and whether a new one would take customers from your own. MapBees answers each the same way in every city it covers.
The job, step by step
Draw every store's catchment
Territory · Areas
Drop a pin per store and draw its catchment by driving, walking, cycling or transit time. Each area gets a dashboard of residents, ages, affluence and places, and where two areas overlap, the overlap gets one of its own.
See how far one store reaches
Catchment bands · Reach
Nest two to four catchments around one pin, such as 5, 10 and 15 minutes, and read its Reach: how much the pin can get to, with nearer bands counting more.
Test a new store against your own
Market Share (Huff gravity model)
Place your stores and competitor stores and give each an attractiveness. You get each store's captured demand, its share and the cannibalization between your own, and the report downloads as a CSV.
Check the drive at rush hour
Territory · Rush hour
Draw a drive catchment from a pin at two to four times of a typical week, and see how many residents it loses at the busiest one compared with the best.
Compare markets like for like
Fair share (Location Quotient)
Ask the same question in Toronto, Sydney or São Paulo and get the same map type with the same controls, across 147 cities in 10 countries.
Try it on a real map
Each button opens the example in the map app, ready to change.
Real answers, with sources
Questions like these, already answered for real cities. Each answer names its source and census year, says what it cannot show, and opens on the live map.
Toronto · Fair share map
Which Toronto neighborhoods have more than their fair share of coffee shops?
Top Standout: Spadina—Fort York
Read the answerSydney · Fair share map
Which Sydney neighborhoods have more than their fair share of cafés?
Top Standout: Sydney
Read the answerSao Paulo · Score map
Where should you open a new café in Sao Paulo?
Top Standout: Sapopemba
Read the answerParis · Fair share map
Which Paris neighborhoods have more than their fair share of restaurants?
Top Standout: 2nd Arrondissement
Read the answerFrom one store to a network
Market Share splits the demand in every contested hex between the stores that can reach it: nearer and more attractive stores win more. That is how you see whether a new location adds customers or mostly moves them from a store you already own.
The report you hand on
The report ranks every store by captured demand, with your share against your competitors' and the demand your own stores take from each other. Download it as a CSV for the deck, or send the live map with Copy link.
What this can't tell you
- No sales, visit or loyalty data: demand is counted as residents, households, income or building volume.
- Catchments are capped: driving up to 40 minutes or 15 km, walking and cycling up to 60 minutes, transit up to 40 minutes.
- Population and income come from one census year per country, and each figure is an estimate for its hex.
Frequently asked questions
Can MapBees model cannibalization between my own stores?
Yes. Market Share splits contested demand between stores with the Huff gravity model and reports how much each of your stores takes from the others.
Can I compare two cities on one map?
Not on one map. Open each city in turn: the questions, map types and controls are the same, so the results read the same way.
Which travel modes can a catchment use?
Driving, walking, cycling and transit by time, and driving, walking and cycling by distance.
Is it free to use?
The map app, Territory and Market Share run in your browser on the Free Tier.
Keep reading
How to use Territory Mapping (step by step)
Want to draw a sales territory, franchise area, or store catchment - or bring yours in from a file - and see how many people, shops, and buildings are inside, and where two areas overlap? This guide walks you through Territory Mapping in London, from the first pin to the full dashboard, with no jargon.
Read the guideHow to use Market Share (step by step)
Want to know how much of the local customers a store would actually win - and how much your own stores steal from each other? This step-by-step guide walks you through the Market Share tool from the first click to the final report, with no jargon.
Read the guideClosest: give every hex to its nearest store by drive time
Pick your stores, depots or clinics on the map and Closest colors every hex of the city by the one you can drive to soonest, up to an hour away, with the roads in the same colors. Here is how to use it on Melbourne with seven starting hexes, how to read the result, and - honestly - what it is not: not an exact catchment, and blind to the way real catchments overlap.
Read the guideAbout the author
Tinkal Gogoi(LinkedIn profile, opens in a new tab)Founder & Location Data Engineer
Builds MapBees's location-intelligence pipeline end to end — census and Overture Maps ingestion, H3 hex scoring, and the map interface — and writes the methodology behind every number on the site.