Who is opening stores in North Carolina

The figures this page is built on, with the scope of each one stated.

• Openings are individually verified new locations, counted over the tracked vintage window. They are not stores standing in the state, and they are not a quarter-over-quarter difference in a record count.
• The rows this page read are matched on an exact NC region code. The index stores that field as free text and carries a small share of dirty spellings, so this count runs a shade low rather than a shade high.

Ranked by verified openings in North Carolina. The count beside each brand is its North Carolina openings — not a national figure.

• Ranked by verified openings in North Carolina. The rank and both NC columns are local; every column marked National describes the whole chain and must not be read as a North Carolina figure.
• "Locations in NC today" is a STOCK from the latest vintage — how many stores the chain operates there now, whenever they opened — while the openings columns are a FLOW over the tracked window. A mature operator can show hundreds of locations and no openings.
• A chain with at least 3 NC locations links to its North Carolina page; below that there is no North Carolina page and the link goes to the chain's national page instead.
• Rows the index classified collision, embedded or virtual are not listed: those classes describe something other than a chain of stores, so their counts would not mean what the column says.
• The eight-quarter store-count series and the per-release opening counts behind these figures are on each chain's own page rather than repeated on all 60 rows here.

The provenance behind the table above: what the index matched, where it filed the brand, and the signals that decide whether a percentage may be printed at all.

• A low coverage agreement or a low website match is a statement about the index's view of the brand, not about the brand.
• Colocated stores are the signature of a concept trading inside another operator's footprint; a high share is why some brands are classed embedded and excluded from the ranked lists.

Chains with no earlier North Carolina footprint in our index — their whole count here is covered by openings we tracked. Store counts are national.

• The claim is a conservation test, not a date: a chain is listed only when its whole North Carolina footprint is covered by openings this page watched happen — stock at or below tracked openings. A chain that finished its North Carolina buildout years ago and opened one more store last quarter has a first IN-WINDOW opening and is not an arrival.
• Stated as two counts rather than as an identity. Stock at or below openings bounds the pre-window footprint at zero; it does not prove each location IS one of the tracked openings.
• "Detected" is deliberate. The date is the release on which the index first saw the opening; the store may have opened earlier and been indexed late.
• Rows the index classified collision, embedded or virtual are not listed.
• 53 chains with a first tracked North Carolina opening are NOT listed above: each already operates more North Carolina locations than the openings we watched, so its first opening here predates the tracked window.

Adding verified locations nationally · no North Carolina location in the index. Store counts and growth are national.

• No North Carolina locations for these chains in the latest release of our location index. Coverage gaps are possible — confirm before you pitch.
• Zero here means zero locations for that brand in this state in the latest vintage of the location index — a snapshot of presence, not a history of openings. A store the index missed, or a brand trading under a domain we resolved differently, would look the same.
• A percentage and a verified-openings count are different units. Where the percentage is withheld the reason is printed in its place; the openings count beside it is a count of individually checkable new stores and is not a substitute for the rate.
• Rows the index classified collision, embedded or virtual are not listed.

Counted from every North Carolina opening row, not a sample. A city needs 3 distinct chains before it gets a page.

• Showing 40 of 165 North Carolina cities clearing the gate, newest first.
• 2,249 openings sit in those cities. The display name is the spelling the index holds most often — "Houston" over "HOUSTON" — and the slug is what folds "St Louis", "St. Louis" and "St.Louis" into one city.

Name a brand and Cobroker ranks the North Carolina trade areas that match where it already performs — demographics, co-tenancy, traffic.