This immediately reminds me of Tyler Cowen's book "An Economist Gets Lunch". He infers all sort of rules for profiling restaurant quality. In fact, he makes th

This immediately reminds me of Tyler Cowen's book "An Economist Gets Lunch". He infers all sort of rules for profiling restaurant quality. In fact, he makes this very observation - high foot traffic areas command higher rents, and it's harder to provide both good quality and good value where rents are high. But restaurants that can be successful without good real estate are a green flag.