A circle drawn on a map is the most expensive shortcut in local marketing. A three-mile radius from a pizza shop routinely includes a motorway, a river, a rail line and a neighbourhood your drivers will not go to after dark, and excludes a housing estate eight minutes away on the good road. If your flyer drop, your mail piece and your paid social all use that circle, you are buying waste in three channels at once.
Build the trade area from drive time under realistic conditions: 8, 12 and 18 minutes, measured at 6: 30pm on a Friday, not at 3am with clear roads. The resulting shape is lopsided, and the lopsidedness is the whole point: it is where your delivery economics actually work.
Overlay your existing customer addresses on the drive-time polygon. Two things become visible immediately. First, dense pockets you are already winning, which are candidates for frequency rather than acquisition. Second, gaps inside the polygon where you should be delivering and are not, which is where acquisition spend belongs.
For each small geography inside the trade area (carrier route, postcode sector, census block group, whatever your mail vendor uses) compute households ordering in the last twelve months divided by total households. That is penetration.
| Penetration | What it means | Where the money goes |
|---|---|---|
| Above 12% | You own this pocket | Frequency and ticket. Do not buy acquisition here. |
| 5–12% | Contested, winnable | The best acquisition spend in the trade area. Mail and door drops pay here. |
| 1–5% | Weak presence | Test before committing. Often a delivery-time or a competitor problem, not an awareness problem. |
| Under 1% inside the polygon | Something is wrong | Check drive times, check driver refusal, check whether a competitor sits between you and them. |
Trade areas are shaped by physical and social geography that no radius tool models.
Once the polygon and the penetration map exist, every geographic channel gets sharper at no extra cost. Door drops run against the 5–12% carrier routes rather than the whole circle. Addressed mail targets specific household types inside those routes. Paid social uses a custom polygon rather than a radius. Local sponsorship targets the schools and clubs inside it.
Multi-unit operators get a second benefit: cannibalisation becomes visible. Where two stores’ polygons overlap, marketing spend from both stores is buying the same households, and the overlap should be assigned to one store rather than contested.
Every household outside the polygon that sees your advertising is a household you paid to disappoint.
For delivery, most locations do the overwhelming majority of their volume within 12 minutes drive time, and economics deteriorate sharply past 18. For carryout, the effective radius is usually tighter than operators expect, often under 8 minutes, because carryout competes with convenience rather than with other pizza.
Only for carryout and only where there is a reason to travel: a distinctive product, a destination location, or an occasion like catering. Broad awareness spend outside the polygon is the most common way independent operators waste a marketing budget.
Annually, and immediately after any change to road layout, delivery policy, a competitor opening or closing, or a new residential development. New housing is the one that most often goes unnoticed: a 200-home estate inside your polygon is a step change in addressable households.
Keep reading
Saturation mail versus addressed mail, carrier route selection, the formats that get kept, and the honest cost per incremental order.
ChannelsRunning a distribution programme that is actually delivered: route design, verification, offer coding, and the local rules that catch operators out.
Growth & new storesHouseholds that just moved in have no local habits yet: how to reach them in the first weeks, and why one good offer beats twelve months of general mail.
Growth & new storesResponding to a new competitor, capitalising on a closure, and the targeted plays that take share without starting a price war you cannot win.
marketing.pizza runs all of it, every night, across every store you have.