Baldwin County AL Business Landscape: Who Competes, Who Is Growing and Who Is Shrinking

Tourism is the county's leading industry, with 8.4 million visitors in 2024, and the visitors themselves never appear in a business count. What does appear is the shops, kitchens, clinics and trades that serve them and the residents. The 2022 County Business Patterns series counts 6,243 employer locations in Baldwin County, with 69,115 employees on those payrolls.

That tells you something about the marketing. A visitor-facing business competes with every other business that a stranger could pick on a short stay. A resident-facing business competes with the firms that a neighbor already knows. And a contractor competes for homeowners who, in many cases, are in the county only part of the year. The table below sorts fifteen trades by how crowded each one is, and the notes after it say what to do about it.

Real estate agents and brokers are far out in front: 262 locations, 10.3 per 10,000 residents and 3.7 times the typical county. That is also among the fastest-growing groups, up 73.5 percent from 151 in 2017. With 96 of every 100 locations under 10 staff, the market is a field of small shops, and the visitor and the second-home buyer are both part of its customer base. Success here is mostly about reputation and neighborhood pages.

Law offices run 1.6 times the typical county, janitorial services 1.5 times, residential remodelers 1.5 times and plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors 1.5 times. The last two both grew quickly: remodelers from 57 to 122 locations (+114 percent) and plumbing and HVAC from 90 to 119 (+32.2 percent). Restaurants come in at 1.4 times, with 246 locations, but that is down from 265 in 2017, a fall of 7.2 percent.

When a trade is this crowded, waiting for organic rankings alone is slow, and a paid campaign on a few high-value searches often makes sense in the meantime.

General automotive repair is the least crowded trade in the table at 0.7 times a typical county, with 45 locations and 93 of every 100 under 10 staff. Insurance agencies are close to typical at 0.9 times, with 87 locations and 11 of them mid-sized. Electrical contractors, at 1.1 times, and beauty salons, at 1.1 times, sit near the middle of the pack, with salons up 41 percent since 2017.

Two trades lost locations. Full-service restaurants fell from 265 to 246 and physicians' offices from 139 to 131, which is 5.8 percent. Accounting firms held flat at 42. The count cannot say why. Closures, mergers and moves to larger sites are all common causes, and the data does not distinguish them.

Roofing has the largest percentage jump, from 10 locations in 2017 to 27 in 2022, an increase of 170 percent. The base is small, so a handful of new firms moves the percentage a long way, but the search for a roofer is clearly busier than it was.

Full-service restaurants are the one trade where the large site is the norm: 125 of the 246 locations have 20 or more staff, and only 25 of every 100 have fewer than 10. That fits a county with a large beach calendar, where a kitchen scales up with the season. For a restaurant, an advertising plan has to compete with big-site budgets, so a Google profile, menus that load fast and event-week posts matter more than a general-purpose website.

Physicians' offices (22 large sites) and dentists (34 mid-sized sites) are the other trades with a visible upper layer. Landscaping has 9 large sites and 15 mid-sized ones, plumbing and HVAC 6 and 15. In those trades the bigger firms advertise widely, so a small shop should compete on a clear service area, fast replies and local reviews.

Real estate, law, remodeling, roofing and auto repair are almost entirely small shops. The advice there is to win on the details a stranger checks first: reviews, photos, a specific town and a phone number that someone answers.

The county authorized 3,705 new residential units in 2021, 3,417 in 2022, 4,363 in 2023, 3,883 in 2024 and 2,665 in 2025. The peak was 2023, and the 2025 figure is the lowest of the five years shown. The survey does not say why, so treat it as one point to watch rather than a trend.

Population is the other half of the story. The Census estimate rose from 231,768 in 2020 to 253,507 in 2023, and the economic development alliance reports 8,480 new jobs from 2022 to 2025. New households need plumbers, electricians, lenders, agents and dentists, so even in a slower permit year the pull of new residents does not vanish.

For marketing, the permit years change the timing. A home authorized this year may need landscaping, cleaning and an insurance agent a year or more later. Trades near the end of the chain should publish pages for the new subdivisions' towns before the keys are handed over.