Childcare centre
Licensed centre-based childcare, infant through pre-K, across the community, premium and employer-sponsored tiers. The deepest playbook in the set.
What it weighs most
Demographic demand
28% of the score. The rest is on this page.
01 / The problem
Demand for childcare looks infinite until you put it on a map. The centres that closed did not close because nobody wanted them. They closed because the children were in the wrong place, the morning commute ran past the wrong side of the building, or the infant room was quietly losing money the whole time.
02 / The decisions it serves
Not a report. A decision somebody has to sign.
Each of these is a question your team already asks, and currently answers with a spreadsheet, a phone call and a fortnight.
Where the deserts actually are
Three to five children for every licensed slot is the gap worth building into. Under 1.5 and you are fighting for a child who already has a place.
Which tier this site can carry
Community, premium, or employer-sponsored. The income floor decides it, and getting it wrong is not recoverable with better marketing.
Whether the commute works
A centre on the wrong side of the inbound corridor is a centre parents drive past twice a day and never into.
Whether your own centres are eating each other
The overlap between an existing catchment and a proposed one, before you sign the lease rather than after.
03 / What it asks you first
It would rather ask than assume.
The answer changes completely depending on these, so it will not guess at them in order to look fast.
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Which brand tier: community, premium, employer-sponsored, or a mixed-delivery state Pre-K?
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A single address, or a scan across a whole market?
04 / The method, in the open
Here is exactly what it weighs. Argue with it.
Most tools will not show you this, because most tools do not have it. These are the weights the playbook really uses.
Demographic demand
Kids 0-5, split 0-2 and 3-5, and dual-income share
Income and private-pay capacity
The gate-keeper for tier
Competition and whitespace
Child-to-licensed-slot ratio
Commute capture and access
The home-to-work corridor, and which side of it
Structural risk overlays
Pre-K penetration, subsidy fragility, labour scarcity
Forward cohort trajectory
Births, migration, housing permits
Tapestry and lifestyle alignment
05 / It is willing to say no
It does not hand you numbers. It gives you a verdict.
An assistant that only ever agrees with you is a mirror, not an analyst. This one holds a line, names the thing that kills the deal, and will tell you to walk away from a site you already like.
The thresholds it holds you to
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Kids aged 0-5 within a 10-minute drive: over 2,000 is exceptional, under 800 is weak.
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The tier has to fit the market. A premium centre priced for a market that cannot carry it fails the families first and the operator second, so it matches the format to the income rather than assuming one.
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A child-to-licensed-slot ratio between 3:1 and 5:1 is a childcare desert, which is exactly where you want to be.
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Dual-income share above 70%, against a national baseline of 63%.
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Stabilised occupancy of 65 to 67%. If a site only pencils at a 70% assumption, reject it.
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A parcel of at least 20,000 sq ft, because licensing wants 75 sq ft of outdoor play per child.
What it will not let you ignore
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Kids 0-5 within a 10-minute drive below 800 for community tier, or below 1,750 for premium.
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A child-to-licensed-slot ratio below 1.5:1, which means the market is already saturated.
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Pre-K penetration above 70% in the surrounding district, when your tier depends on 3-5 enrolment.
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A parcel under 20,000 sq ft, which cannot hold a 100-seat centre's outdoor-play minimum.
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The site sits across traffic from the dominant inbound commute direction.
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The 0-2 cohort is more than 60% of under-sixes, which is a margin trap: infant rooms lose money at normal occupancy.
06 / Why not just ask an AI
A fluent answer and a defensible one are not the same thing.
Every model will answer a location question now, and most of the answers sound right. Ask twice and you get two of them. Ask where the number came from and the room goes quiet.
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It reads the commute corridor, not just the catchment: which direction it runs, which side of the road you are on, at eight in the morning.
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It knows an infant room loses money at normal occupancy, so a demographic full of under-twos is flagged as a margin trap rather than celebrated as demand.
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It holds you to a 65 to 67% stabilised occupancy. A model built to please you will happily pencil 75% and let you find out later.
07 / What it runs on, and what you get
The data underneath
Licensed and authoritative, and named in the output, so the number keeps its source when it travels.
- Esri GeoEnrichment
- Esri Tapestry
- LEHD LODES commute flows
- CDC WONDER births
- BLS wage data
- NCES school districts
- CCDF subsidy policy
- Head Start locations
- Regrid parcels
- Census ACS
What you walk out with
A ten-slide report: the verdict, the trade area, the commute corridor, the competition, the desert classification, the structural-risk overlay, and a methodology page with the vintage of every number.
The method it used and the vintage of every number travel with it, so it still holds up when somebody asks you why in six months.
How an answer travels08 / It pairs with
Nobody makes one decision in isolation. Most teams run this alongside two or three of these.
Run Childcare centre on something you already decided. See if it agrees with you.
The honest test of a method is whether it reaches the conclusion your best analyst already reached, and tells you plainly when it does not.
Twenty minutes, and you can argue with the weights.