🏆 Top 20 Candidate Locations

Ranked by nearby purchasing power · Click to focus

Food Truck Location Heatmap

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Summary

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Boundaries

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Methodology

How purchasing power scores are estimated for each census block.

Data Sources

Dataset	Source	Description
Job counts	Census LODES8 WAC 2023	Block-level workplace jobs for King & Snohomish counties. Public domain, no commercial-use restrictions.
Wages (King Co.)	BLS QCEW 2024	County-level average annual wages by 2-digit NAICS sector.
Wages (Snohomish Co.)	Census QWI 2023	County-level average annual wages by 2-digit NAICS sector.
Block centroids	Census TIGER	Pre-fetched lat/lon centroid for each block (8,743 blocks).
Drive-time isochrone	Geoapify Routing API	20-minute drive polygon from the commissary kitchen at 19600 144th Ave NE, Woodinville.
Sales tax zones	WA DOR ArcGIS (Q1 2026)	Retail sales tax boundaries and rates.

Purchasing Power per Block

Each census block is scored by estimating the total annual wage income of all workers employed in that block. This is a proxy for collective employee spending power — workers who work near a location are the primary daytime customer base for a food truck.

LODES WAC data cross-tabulates each block’s jobs along two independent axes:

• Earnings tiers (CE01–CE03) — directly from LODES, exact counts, no estimation required.
• NAICS sectors (CNS01–CNS20) — used only to derive a representative wage for CE03 workers.

The score is computed as:

Tier	Workers	Wage proxy	Rationale
CE01 ≤$15k/yr	Direct LODES count	$10,000	Midpoint of $0–$15k band.
CE02 $15k–$40k/yr	Direct LODES count	$27,500	Midpoint of $15k–$40k band.
CE03 >$40k/yr	Direct LODES count	NAICS-weighted county avg (min $50k)	The CE03 band is open-ended, so a wage must be estimated. The block’s NAICS sector distribution is used as weights against county-level average wages (BLS QCEW / Census QWI) to produce a block-specific estimate. A $50k floor prevents underestimation in low-wage sectors.

Total PP = CE01 × $10k + CE02 × $27.5k + CE03 × NAICS estimate

Candidate Location Ranking

The top 20 candidate vending locations are identified by applying a Gaussian kernel density estimate to all scored blocks (weighted by PP), smoothing onto a 200×200 grid, then extracting local maxima with a minimum separation of ~1.1 miles. Each candidate’s score is the sum of PP within a ~1-mile catchment radius.

Limitations

• Scores reflect workplace jobs, not residents. Blocks with high residential density but low employment will score near zero.
• LODES data does not provide a CE×NAICS cross-tabulation, so the NAICS sector distribution (used for the CE03 wage estimate) includes workers of all earnings tiers.
• County-level wage averages may not reflect wages at specific establishments within a block.
• Job counts are from 2023; wage data from 2023–2024.

This product uses Census Bureau data but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.   Basemap: © OpenStreetMap contributors. Esri Light Gray Canvas © Esri.