Late next spring, Daphne’s plans to open another store in Mesa, Arizona, and sometime after that it will open a third facility in an undisclosed location nearby.

According to industry analysts, Daphne’s is part of a growing trend in these parts: the expansion of local and regional quick-service chains—many based in California—into the large chunk of rugged mountain states traditionally known more for cowboys than cappuccino.

Most of the movement seems to be occurring in greater Phoenix, Denver, and, to a lesser extent, Las Vegas—a phenomenon explained by a recent series of studies. In March, 2004, Business 2.0 magazine published a list of America’s top 20 “boom towns.” The magazine reported that—based on information provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dun & Bradstreet, Carnegie Mellon University, Brookings Institution, and the Chamber of Commerce Researchers Assn., to name just a few—’burbs were likely to experience phenomenal job market growth through the next several years.

Number 12 on the list, with a projected growth of 15 percent through 2008, was Phoenix, followed closely by Denver, with an expected growth of 9 percent. Then, as if to underscore the point, the Fannie Mae Foundation seven months later published a Census Note listing what it described as America’s 53 “boomburbs.”

A boomburb is a city of more than 100,000 residents, which, though not the largest in its metropolitan area, has maintained double-digit growth rates for several decades. Included on the list were 13 municipalities in the mountain states: Gilbert, Chandler, Peoria, Mesa, Scottsdale, Glendale, and Tempe, all clustered in the greater Phoenix area; Aurora, Westminster, and Lakewood, near Denver; North Las Vegas and Henderson in greater Las Vegas; and, finally, West Valley City, near Salt Lake City, Utah.

The foundation went on to identify three mountain-state “edge counties”—defined as “fast-growing counties near the edges of their regions.” They are Arapahoe, Boulder, and Jefferson counties, all in the shadow of greater Denver.

And, as if to convince any remaining Doubting Thomases, Fannie Mae published yet another study, called “Cowboys and Cappuccino: The Emerging Diversity of the Rural West,” that tracked major cultural changes in the great unwashed states likely to affect, among other things, would-be purveyors of quick-service fineries. The gist of its findings: While areas defined as “cowboy counties” (i.e., dominated by traditional rural working-class values) still outnumber the newer and emerging “cappuccino counties” dominated by college-educated, professional, or service-oriented workers, and retirees, a major shift is occurring. Specifically, the study pointed out, from 1950 to 2000, the percentage of so-called cowboys in the mountain states dipped from 68 percent to 59 percent, while during the same period, the portion of cappuccino-oriented residents rose from 16 percent to 25 percent.

Presumably, that trend is continuing. “The Rural West appeals to an increasingly diverse array of people,” the Fannie Mae study concludes, “from the yuppie escapee looking to commune with nature to the extreme sport lover who wants unfettered access to its most fragile and remote places. These newcomers and their lifestyles present a strong contrast to the dominant lifestyles of the Old West—where most people either work with the land through farming, ranching, or mining, or provide support to those who do.”

The company also has a rather unusual way of realizing those plans. In a press release issued last year, Panda Express announced that it was seeking “surplus real estate,” preferably properties “owned by multi-unit retail chains…Panda Express has the flexibility,” the release said, “to adapt to a variety of venues including street stores, malls, retail centers, supermarkets, college campuses, casinos, airports, theme parks, and stadiums.” An accompanying list added several other options as well, including major entertainment centers, hospitals, and arenas.

Panda is certainly not the first quick-casual or quick-service chain to explore such approaches, nor are the others all based in California. But the trend is paramount in this Pacific state, where the price of real estate has skyrocketed beyond belief while its availability has taken a steep nosedive south. Though California continues to be one of the nation’s hotbeds of growth for the entire restaurant industry, analysts say, the difficulty of finding new turf here is giving otherwise restless chains only two reasonable options. They can either find innovative ways of expanding into existing facilities or look inward—in this case by improving or refining the units they already have.

“There’s definitely lots of competition,” acknowledges Steve Selcer, a retail specialist for Wilson Commercial Real Estate in Los Angeles. “There are lots of people out there looking for the same piece of property. If anything, people are refining their site selection—trying to get other places that will work. With the rents [and prices] as high as they are, finding the right thing is getting tougher.”

Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of foodservice strategies for W.D. Partners agrees. “Getting money isn’t hard, getting operators isn’t hard—it’s getting sites that is hard,” he says of California. “Real estate just isn’t available, and if it is, you pay through the kazoo. Five or 10 years ago, people lamented about the difficulty of getting sites. Those are now the good old days. And there’s no relief in sight; five years from now, today will be the good old days.”

The motivation for looking, of course, is clear.

Fannie Mae’s 2004 study deepens the impression of a growth-mad region. Research-ers listed 53 “boomburbs” nationwide, 24 of which are in California. Those cities are Irvine, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Chula Vista, Corona, Riverside, Moreno Valley, Santa Clarita, Oxnard, Thousand Oaks, Lancaster, Ontario, San Bernardino, Simi Valley, Fullerton, Oceanside, Santa Rosa, Orange, Santa Ana, Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Fremont, Sunnyvale, and Daly City.

“What’s happening is very interesting,” said Michael Allenson, a principal analyst for Technomic, Inc., a restaurant consulting firm in Chicago. Because some chains are less able to expand into new units as easily as in the past, he says, “they’re working on refining their existing units” by increasing capacity and production through added seating, curb space, and efficiency, or, in some cases, rolling into better-defined quick-casual concepts.

“A lot of quick-casuals do very well out there,” Allenson says, “because California seems to be a little more into both the trendy and fresh, and that’s what quick-casuals are all about.

There are exceptions, of course, most notably two: Seattle, Washington, and, to a lesser extent, Portland, Oregon.

Fannie Mae’s “boomburb” study helps round out the picture. Of the 53 cities deemed “boomburbs,” two are in the Northwest—Salem, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, and Bellevue, Washington, a suburb of Seattle.

A second study published by Fannie Mae fills in even more of the blanks. Looking at what they called “edge counties”—defined as areas, often at or near the edges of their regions, that are sort of the county equivalents of boomburbs in that they support large populations (200,000 to 800,000 people) and have shown double-digit growth each census since 1950—researchers found seven such areas in the Northwest.

They are Kitsap, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston counties—all in the shadow of Seattle—as well as Clackamas, Marion, and Washington counties, near greater Portland. In Seattle, the study reported, residents of the so-called edge counties comprised about 47 percent (and 5 percent of the growth) of the greater metro population of 2.9 million. In Portland, the numbers were similar: 46 percent (of 1.8 million) including 53 percent of the growth.

There is, of course, some bad news as well. In a recent list of America’s ten most overpriced cities published by Forbes, Seattle was rated number one and Portland number three. —Stanley Simon