How to Use GIS for Convenience Store Site Selection and Distribution Center Analysis

Authors: Brett Lucas and Stewart Berry

Choosing the right location for a new convenience store or distribution center can determine whether a business thrives or struggles. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software transforms raw location data into actionable insights, helping retailers visualize customer reach, analyze competitor positioning, and optimize supply chain logistics. This step-by-step guide demonstrates how to use Maptitude mapping software to perform drive-time analysis, trade area mapping, and distribution network optimization for convenience store (c-store) expansion.

What Is GIS and Why Does It Matter for Retail Expansion?

GIS allows businesses to manipulate, analyze, and present data in a geographic context. For retailers and supply chain professionals, this means transforming spreadsheets full of addresses into visual maps that reveal patterns invisible in raw data.

Retail site selection with GIS helps executives, analysts, and planners accomplish critical tasks: analyzing population density and growth patterns, identifying underserved markets ripe for expansion, evaluating how proposed locations affect transportation networks and service areas, and determining optimal distribution center placement to minimize delivery times and costs.

Organizations across real estate, market analysis, logistics, and operations leverage geospatial intelligence to improve decision-making, reduce risk, and align strategies with evolving market conditions.

Why Perform a Trade Area Analysis?

A trade area analysis provides a visual representation of which stores a particular distribution center (DC) serves. This analysis reveals whether a DC is overextended, serving too many locations, or positioned inefficiently relative to outlying stores, which creates unnecessary transportation costs.

Understanding your trade areas helps answer questions like: How far can delivery trucks realistically travel and return within federal drive-time regulations? Which stores should be reassigned when opening a new DC? Where do opportunities exist for market expansion without straining logistics?

Tutorial: Analyzing C-Store Expansion with Maptitude

This tutorial uses Kwik Trip/Kwik Star, a gas station and convenience store chain headquartered in La Crosse, Wisconsin, as a real-world case study. While Kwik Trip started in western Wisconsin with high store concentration in Wisconsin and Minnesota, the chain has expanded into Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Historically, Kwik Trip relied on a single DC in La Crosse to serve over 875 locations. With increased growth and extended travel times, a second DC opened in November 2025 in Windsor, Wisconsin.

Step 1: Gather and Prepare Store Location Data

Store location data for this analysis comes directly from the Kwik Trip/Kwik Star website. Alternatively, you can import business location data from the Maptitude built-in layers or create a spreadsheet manually using addresses from Google Maps or similar sources.

1. Create a project folder on your computer or shared drive.
2. Download the store list as an Excel file from kwiktrip.com/Maps-Downloads/Store-List.
   
3. Open the spreadsheet in Excel and rename the tab containing locations to "Stores."
4. Delete any extra rows at the top such as “Store List - Kwik Trip | Kwik Star” and sort the data alphabetically on “Store Name” and delete non-convenience store entries (tobacco outlets, corporate buildings, etc.).
   
5. Create a new tab called "DC" and enter the distribution center information with separate fields for State, City, Address, Zip Code, and Year Open.
   

   State	City	Address	ZIP Code	Year Open
   WI	La Crosse	2025 Kwik Trip Way	54603	1973
   WI	Windsor	6058 Pepsi Way	53598	2025

Step 2: Import Data into Maptitude

1. Open Maptitude and create a new workspace of the United States.
2. Add the store data by choosing Map > Add Table/Spreadsheet to a Map. Follow the prompts to open the "Stores" sheet. Create-a-Map Wizard will recognize your latitude and longitude fields automatically.
   
3. Click Next and choose the Locate records in your file by XY coodinates (longitude/latitude).
   
4. Click Next and choose whether to "Import" or "Link" your spreadsheet. Import creates a static dataset, while Link allows real-time updates when you modify the source spreadsheet. For ongoing store network management, linking provides flexibility to add new locations.
   
5. Click Finish. Once the store data has been imported, your workspace will display all store locations.
6. Repeat steps 2-4 for the "DC" sheet. Since these DCs do not have lat/lon coordinates, use the Maptitude built-in geocoder to convert addresses to map coordinates by choosing Locate records in your file by Address, ZIP Code or City in step 3.
   

Once you geocode the DC layer, your map will display both layers: the Store layer and the DC layer.

Pause here and examine the map. Do you see any interesting patterns in terms of the store network? Any markets that are overserved or underserved? How about the Minneapolis area in terms of downtown and the outer suburbs? Do you see any limitations in terms of travel time for trucks to deliver merchandise to more remote markets?

Step 3: Create Drive-Time Rings to Analyze DC Coverage

Drive-time rings show how far a vehicle can travel from a starting point within specific time intervals, accounting for road networks and realistic travel speeds. For distribution planning, this helps determine which stores a DC can efficiently serve while complying with federal regulations on driver hours.

1. Make the "DC Layer" the working layer.
2. Using the Select by Pointing tool, click on the La Crosse DC to select it. Once selected it should change color.
   
3. Choose Tools > Routing & Directions > Drive-Time Rings.
4. Use the Select Locations button to create rings around the selected feature in the DC Layer and configure the analysis to create 6 rings at 60-minute intervals (covering 1 to 6 hours of drive time).
   
5. Click to run the analysis and examine the resulting map.
   
   The initial map reveals important insights about the existing store network relative to DC location. Notice how stores in western markets fall outside reasonable drive-time coverage from La Crosse, potentially requiring overnight driver stays.
6. Choose to use All Features in the DC layer and run the analysis again to include the Windsor DC and generate combined drive-time rings for both facilities.
   
   

With both DCs mapped, you can evaluate expansion opportunities and identify coverage gaps. Does the new Windsor DC location make sense given the existing store network and planned western expansion?

Step 4: Assign Stores to the Nearest Distribution Center

Manually determining which of 875+ stores should be served by which DC would take hours. The Maptitude tagging feature automates this assignment in minutes.

1. Make the store layer the working layer.
2. Modify the table by choosing Dataview > Tables > Modify and add a new field called "Closest DC" (Character type, 20-character length).
   
3. Open a dataview of the store layer by choosing Dataview > New Dataview and scroll to the right if necessary to display the "Closest DC" column.
4. Right-click the column header and choose Fill.
5. Choose the Tag option and choose DC Layer from the Using layer drop-down, All Features from the Selection Set drop-down, and City from the Tag with drop-down.
   
6. Click OK and Maptitude will automatically assign each store to its nearest DC.

Step 5: Visualize Store Assignments by DC

1. Choose Map > Thematic Mapping > Color.
2. Choose Closest DC from the Field drop-down.
3. Leave Method as List of Values and Max Classes at 512.
   
4. Review the Styles tab, which shows color assignments and store counts for each DC.If you want, you can click Style to change the icon, size, or color for either of the classes.
   
5. Click OK.

The resulting map color-codes each store by its assigned distribution center, instantly revealing the geographic split between La Crosse and Windsor service territories. This visualization helps answer questions about DC capacity, expansion direction, and market saturation.

For example, Kwik Trip's expansion into Fargo, North Dakota places stores approximately six hours from La Crosse, meaning semi-trucks may require overnight stays before returning.

Key Takeaways from This Analysis

Drive-time rings represent geographic areas showing how far someone can travel from a starting point within a specific time frame, factoring in road networks, water bodies, and traffic conditions. Combined with store and DC data, drive-time analysis becomes a powerful tool for identifying growth opportunities and logistics constraints.

This type of analysis helps retailers evaluate market penetration and saturation, identify stores requiring reassignment to new distribution centers, plan expansion into underserved territories, and optimize delivery routing to reduce costs and driver fatigue.

Advanced Applications: Market Share and Store Attractiveness

To build on this analysis, businesses can incorporate measures of store attractiveness into their expansion models. Attributes that influence customer appeal include: number of fuel pumps, store square footage, presence of a car wash, facility age, date of last remodel, and available amenities.

These attributes can be converted into a scoring system and used as weighting fields in models like the Market Share/Huff Model, enabling more precise and data-driven expansion strategies.

Get Started with Maptitude

Maptitude mapping software provides the tools, maps, and demographic data you need to analyze your retail network and make data-driven expansion decisions. Whether you're evaluating a single new location or optimizing an entire distribution network, Maptitude offers desktop and online mapping capabilities to support your business intelligence needs.

Request a free trial to explore these capabilities with your own data.

Next Steps

Learn more about Maptitude to see how you and your team can benefit from mapping software!

Schedule a Free Personalized Demo

Free Trial  Buy Now