Second-gen restaurant spaces: how to find across multiple markets?
I guess this is probably the million dollar question. And I’m not really looking for a silver bullet so much as hoping to have a discussion that might generate some insights.

I’m part of a hospitality company and I focus on our real estate activities. We target leasing second gen restaurant spaces across a number of markets in two regions of the US (PNW and the south).

We have relationships with brokers across these markets. But most of our leads come from articles in the local newspaper about a restaurant closing. Or a thread on the local subreddit about a closure. Then I call our broker that’s local and he reaches out to LL/rep and we go from there. But finding the leads is on me, even though I’m thousands of miles away. 

This approach seems woefully inefficient and frankly, unprofessional, but it produces results and I haven’t come up with anything better as an alternative or supplement.

What else should I be doing? 

Should I have higher expectations for our brokers? I used to get annoyed that I’d find the leads faster than them even though I’m not local but I’ve sense realized maybe my expectations weren’t realistic.
[{"id": "igiajx3", "text": "Sounds like you have shitty brokers.", "replies": [{"id": "igiavbh", "text": "I mean I thought so too, but my experience has been pretty consistent across multiple markets, firms, brokers, etc - so I figured my expectations were just off.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "igip4ni", "text": "Unprofessional and inefficient. Sounds about right. \n\nIf it was me, I would use yelp or google places api and run a script that targets restaurants to get their hours and if it is closed or not. \n\nRun it once a week for your targeted areas. What tends to happen is a place will be open normal hours, then reduced hours and then closed, so you can put these places on a watch list. \n\nThen have your brokers pull title on all these places and get the contact info of these landlords. \n\nSee if there are landlords that have multiple properties in multiple markets. Have your brokers call these landlords every 6 months to see how business is going and if anything changed. \n\nAt the first sign of trouble, a rent check bounced or some business is looking a little shaky, who is the first call these landlords will have? To the guy who called them every 6 months for three years. \n\nThat is my advice. Build a universe of acceptable spots, run scripts to see if there are trends that appear, have brokers form relationships with these landlords. \n\nAnd if you are not getting the level of service you want from your brokers, take a look at your business practices and see where you messed up. Brokers are like dogs, it is not the dogs problem you trained them improperly. And if they don\u2019t want to do the work, see about switching to a group that does tenant rep specific.", "replies": [{"id": "igj5cp7", "text": "&gt;Run it once a week for your targeted areas. What tends to happen is a place will be open normal hours, then reduced hours and then closed, so you can put these places on a watch list. \n\nIs there a way to run a script that alerts you if on Yelp a business has temporarily closed? They'll have that or a permanently closed tag on Yelp when a stores closes down.\n\nAlot of times you'll see a business temp close and say we're remodeling or something before they announce it's permanent. Not sure how Google handles those or if there's a script to run there also?", "replies": [{"id": "igjgzex", "text": "A screen scraper script can pull this info. Since yelp doesn\u2019t require a login it shouldn\u2019t be super hard and all the urls don\u2019t change so once you get all the urls, it navigates to the web page and reads in the html.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "igj5n0e", "text": "In my market 2nd gen space is usually sublet or business is sold.  It's rare to see those spaces come to the market in good locations. Every qsr wants 2nd gen space too; lots of competition.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "iglfoui", "text": "What are you trying to fill with these spaces?\n\nI don't have any restaurant space today but, I may have some in a year.\n\nDM me your contact info please.\n\nMy asset is just outside of Bellevue (Amazon's 2nd HQ that they're leaving Seattle for).", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "igs8pv6", "text": "Sounds like you need to reach out to me honestly", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]