Retail, restaurant and franchise site selection: choose the right premises faster
Expansion teams select commercial property faster by processing plain-language requirements or site briefs directly through Claro AI on the CASAFARI platform. Instead of scanning hundreds of online listings manually, acquisition managers instantly receive a deduplicated shortlist of commercial premises where every technical requirement is verified, cross-referenced with footfall and demographic data, and structured for acquisition committees or CRM pipelines.
How do you turn a site acquisition brief into a verified shortlist?
Expansion managers opening retail stores, gyms, or restaurants face strict technical constraints. A restaurant brand expanding into Madrid or Barcelona might require a minimum surface area of 250 square metres, a corner façade, a ceiling height of 3.5 metres, and a mandatory roof extraction flue (salida de humos). In Munich or Berlin, the same team looks for approved commercial change-of-use (Nutzungsänderung) and roof exhaust routes (Abluftführung über Dach). Scanning portal descriptions to check these criteria manually wastes days of senior management time.
Rather than reading unstructured descriptions individually, acquisition managers can submit their exact acquisition criteria in plain language or upload an existing PDF, Word, or Excel brief using turning a site brief file into a commercial search. Teams expanding across Spain can also pass up to 5,000 existing store coordinates into the system using keeping candidate premises away from your own stores to eliminate cannibalisation risks automatically.
Claro AI searches deduplicated commercial premises across Spain and Germany, as well as commercial land plots in Germany. Instead of filtering out listings with incomplete details, the tool evaluates every property description and structured attribute against the brief. It labels each requirement as met, missed, or not stated, quoting the exact text from the advert so acquisition teams know precisely what is confirmed before speaking to the landlord's estate agent.
How do you verify footfall, spending power and asking rents before a site visit?
A commercial property can meet physical specifications while sitting on a low-footfall street. Conducting physical site visits without location data risks wasting travel budgets and negotiation efforts. Prime high-street retail asking rents reached EUR 245 per square metre per month in Madrid and EUR 235 per square metre per month in Barcelona in Q4 2025, according to the CBRE Spain Q4 2025 retail market report. In Munich, prime high-street asking rents stood at EUR 330 per square metre per month in Q1 2026, as reported in the Cushman & Wakefield DNA of Real Estate Europe Q1 2026.
To justify these rental levels, site selection teams evaluate location performance directly from their desk. By running explain_location on property coordinates in Spain, teams receive detailed Location Intelligence. As detailed in the guide on pedestrian footfall and catchment figures for any point in Spain, this feature provides a 0 to 100 Footfall Index powered by Targomo location intelligence in CASAFARI. The data highlights pedestrian traffic by time of day, weekday versus weekend, and local versus tourist share, alongside 10-minute walk and drive catchment demographics from MB Research.
Alongside footfall figures, acquisition managers run market_snapshot to complete benchmarking asking rent per square metre by district. Comparing a property's asking price per square metre against current district distributions ensures negotiations are backed by clear market evidence.
How do you compare shortlisted premises for the expansion committee?
Investment and expansion committees require structured, objective comparisons rather than disparate agent PDFs. When preparing board packs, teams pass candidate property IDs to the compare_premises tool, or allow custom AI agents in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or Gemini CLI to evaluate candidate premises against brand-specific weighting rules via Casafari MCP for AI agents.
This process generates side-by-side matrices covering surface areas, asking rents per square metre, asking price histories, and verified technical specifications. Unconfirmed listing requirements are highlighted in a single checklist, allowing acquisition teams to negotiate letters of intent with clear points for clarification.
By uniting physical criteria, historical market pricing, and footfall figures into unified board presentations, teams supporting CASAFARI for Business Expansion make faster, evidence-backed acquisition decisions.
How do you feed new matching commercial premises straight into your CRM?
Prime commercial corners and fully compliant hospitality units are scarce across major European cities. For example, as of 11 October 2026, only 1,530 retail units for rent in Madrid and 1,797 in Barcelona explicitly stated a smoke outlet in their listing text, according to the CASAFARI guide to smoke-outlet rules in Madrid and Barcelona. Relying on manual weekly portal checks causes expansion teams to miss prime premises.
Expansion teams streamline search routines by connecting scheduled nightly workflows via the CASAFARI Property Data APIs or the MCP server. Saved briefs run automatically every night against incoming supply across all major portals.
Newly listed or price-adjusted commercial premises matching the brand's exact criteria are deduplicated, scored, and loaded directly into the team's CRM every morning. Acquisition managers can view the full workflow breakdown in the article on commercial site selection in Spain and Germany with Claro AI.
How to start choosing commercial sites with CASAFARI
Expansion workflows are accessible via the CASAFARI web application, through Casafari MCP inside AI environments like Claude and ChatGPT, or directly via the REST API. Teams manage usage through clear platform plans based on platform tokens:
- Free plan: 1,000 tokens for 30 days, no credit card required.
- Agent plan: EUR 70 per month (or EUR 49 per month billed annually).
- Claro AI plan: EUR 500 per month (or EUR 400 per month billed annually), metered in platform tokens.
To start building verified shortlists, sign in to the CASAFARI platform or read the technical specifications in the Claro AI developer documentation.
Frequently asked questions
Which countries and property types does Claro AI cover for site selection?
Claro AI searches commercial premises for rent and for sale—including shops, restaurant premises, offices, and warehouses—in Spain and Germany, as well as commercial plots of land in Germany. CASAFARI is entering the US now: selected states, commercial real estate only, via Claro AI. CASAFARI's broader deduplicated property graph covers 16 countries across Europe, the United Arab Emirates, and North America.
How does Claro AI know if a unit has a smoke outlet, loading bay or sufficient ceiling height?
Claro AI reads the full description text and structured attributes of every deduplicated commercial listing, evaluating each technical requirement in your brief. Rather than excluding property listings with incomplete descriptions, it explicitly labels each criterion as met, not met, or not stated, providing exact quotes from the listing text. This gives expansion teams immediate clarity on confirmed specifications and unverified requirements prior to agent viewings.
What footfall and demographic data is available for retail site selection?
Using the explain_location endpoint, any geographical coordinate in Spain returns Location Intelligence powered by Targomo and MB Research. This includes a 0 to 100 pedestrian Footfall Index segmented by weekday, weekend, time of day, and local versus tourist share. In addition, teams access 10-minute walking or driving catchment demographics, including age brackets, household counts, net income quintiles, and purchasing power.
Can we use Claro AI inside Claude, ChatGPT or our own internal CRM?
Yes, CASAFARI is an AI agent-native real estate data intelligence platform designed for flexible deployment. Site selection workflows can be operated directly in the web application, connected to AI environments like Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or Gemini CLI via Casafari MCP, or integrated through the REST API. This enables automated nightly data pipelines that filter, score, and populate matching commercial property directly into your CRM.
How much does Claro AI cost and how do platform tokens work?
Every new user can start on the Free plan, which provides 1,000 tokens for 30 days with no credit card required. Paid options include the Agent plan at EUR 70 per month (or EUR 49 per month billed annually) and the dedicated Claro AI plan at EUR 500 per month (or EUR 400 per month billed annually). All API calls, MCP tasks, and automated briefs are metered using platform tokens.
See it on your own market
1,000 free tokens for 30 days, no card. Then the Agent plan or prepaid tokens.