Where to open my next cafe

What it does

Every month: areas of your city with many residents, few cafes and well-rated neighbours, checked by an AI agent and scored by xMap AI on a map.

In one sentence: Monthly on the 1st at 08:00, in Vancouver, count who lives around, count the coffee shops and cafes within 1 km of each, keep those where population ≥ 500, work out new fields, sort them by people_per_cafe and keep the top 20, let the AI agent answer, score and rank them with xMap AI, then show them on a map and email the list to you.

Why it is useful

Choosing the next cafe by instinct is expensive. This flow ranks every block by demand and competition every month.

Who it is for

Restaurants & cafes. Owners and operators of restaurants, cafes and food brands watching competitors, reviews and the next branch. Every use case for restaurants & cafes

Best use cases

• A cafe brand planning growth
• A franchise investor
• A landlord pitching to cafes

What each run gives you

• A map coloured by score
• An email

The time it saves

Monthly on the 1st at 08:00. Doing the same work by hand takes about 360 minutes each time; it runs about 1 time a month, so it saves about 6 hours a month (an estimate). It is advanced: 11 blocks and 2 tools.

The flow, block by block

1. On the 1st of every monthTrigger · ScheduleStarts the flow on a timetable.
2. My cityWhere · Area of interestSets where the flow looks: countries, cities or specific places, or areas you draw on a map.
3. People in every block of the cityxMap data · DemographicsWho lives in an area: the number of residents, men and women, and nine age groups, from xMap’s population grid (hexagons of about 0.1 km², about 100 countries).
4. Cafes around each blockxMap data · Nearby placesPlaces around a point from xMap’s own places database (300M+ places, refreshed every month): pick the types of place (more than 5,000, such as Restaurant, Cafe, Pharmacy, Hospital or Gas station, or a whole group of them) and how far to look.
5. Places with real demandLogic · FilterKeeps only the items that match a rule.
6. People per cafeLogic · Calculated fieldAdds fields worked out from the others: a number, a text or a yes/no.
7. Best 20 firstLogic · Sort and limitPuts the items in order, and can keep only the first ones: the 10 best rated, the 20 nearest, the highest fit scores.
8. Walk each area with the AI agentxMap AI · AI agentAn AI agent: for each incoming message it thinks, uses the blocks you link to its Tools port (data, xMap AI, lookups, your tables, other flows, apps), remembers the conversation and writes an answer in {{reply}}.
9. Who lives around itxMap data · DemographicsA tool the AI agent uses when it needs itWho lives in an area: the number of residents, men and women, and nine age groups, from xMap’s population grid (hexagons of about 0.1 km², about 100 countries).
10. Offices, universities and gyms around itxMap data · Nearby placesA tool the AI agent uses when it needs itPlaces around a point from xMap’s own places database (300M+ places, refreshed every month): pick the types of place (more than 5,000, such as Restaurant, Cafe, Pharmacy, Hospital or Gas station, or a whole group of them) and how far to look.
11. Score each spot with xMap AIxMap AI · xMap LLMTell the AI what to do in plain words.
12. Show them on a mapAction · Show on a mapShows the results as points on a map, with the area of interest.
13. Email me the listAction · EmailSends one email per run with all the items, or one email per item.

Every block can be changed after you use the template: the city, the type of place, the score, where the results go.

Use it now

Answer a few questions, enter your work email, and it runs in your own account, kept running until you pause it. Use this template.