Cracker Barrel Project

To Site or Not to Site:

Executive Summary

          Cracker Barrel is a corporation that has become a nation wide industry.  It is especially found on the Southern landscape because we love the food they fix.  However, determining the location of such a restaurant takes a lot of careful planning because of their stringent siting criteria.  The purpose of this paper is to briefly identify the steps that our team took to determine a suitable site.  My team consists of Seth Broadfoot and Michael Hughes.

            Before we started our project, our team developed the cartographic model.  This gave us a game plan as to how we needed to break the data down into useful information. 

          The first computer query examined was the interstates.  The interstates were necessary because the first requirement for our project was to have frontage to an interstate.  Based on this criterion, the only logical place for a cracker barrel is off of I59.  I759 is not an interstate; it is an intrastate road system. 

          Secondly, we queried out parcels greater than 2.5 acres, and queried out what areas are zoned commercial.  At this point, we merged these layers together to see which layers are greater than 2.5 acres and zoned commercial.  This narrowed our search by approximately 90%. 

          Thirdly, we created a buffer of five miles.  This allowed us to intersect the buffer with the population to see if the population aspect of the criteria was met.  After this determination was made, we intersected the income to determine if the population per capita was met.  After the production of the new layer, we had to set per capita greater than zero to throw out any null values that would skew our data.

          Finally, we took a look at the traffic count and price.  We received the traffic count from a 1998 Traffic Flow Map.  Price was determined by contacting a certified appraiser, Bill Hopewell, in the area.  He appraised the land off of I59 to be 100,000 for three acres of property.  He also appraised the land off of I759 to be worth 120,000 for the same three acres.

          This left us with a very difficult decision to make.  We had three sites that could support a Cracker Barrel (Figure 1, 2 and 3).  Then we had to set down and determine which of those sites would be the best place to put a Cracker Barrel.  We felt that proposed site one (figure 1) would be the best place to put the restaurant.  It met most of our criteria.  The only thing that it was lacking was that the traffic flow on the interstate was only 24,190.

          This project presented a couple of problems.  First, it taught us that there could be more than one correct answer.  This made it very difficult in determining a site.  The second problem was our inexperience with ArcGis.  This problem would not have been nearly as stressful if I understood this program better.  However, I realize that was one of the reasons for the assignment.  The group that I had was great and very cooperative.  We all spent many hours in the lab working on this project.  Everyone pulled his own weight!                       

 Figure 1                        

Figure 2   

Figure 3