Great idea. I often like to find something "along the way", especially for long road trips.
Just a datapoint, trying to find a Boston Market along my route gave me lots of results that weren't a Boston Market. You might need to do a little better matching on the via portion of the data.
OP may want to partner with lodging sites - road-weary travelers may
not know where they will want to spend the night until late in the
day, and the less expensive motel choices are often in smaller towns
on their route, so a "search along route" function can be more
useful than tools like Around Me with a "search around placename"
function that requires iteration over many placenames.
I tried "Boston Market" between San Mateo and San Jose, and got 7 results,
of which 2 were Boston Market locations, 1 a Harry's Hofbrau, 2 more
are probably restaurants, and 2 appear to be unrelated.
Trying Boston Market "without quotes" produced many more results,
including all the above, and also "Putnam Lexus," "Intel Capital,"
"eBay," "Aol," and, more tellingly, the "Fish Market" near Fry's in PA.
So, users should employ double quotes in multi-word searches,
and be selective in choosing from the results.
Just a datapoint, trying to find a Boston Market along my route gave me lots of results that weren't a Boston Market. You might need to do a little better matching on the via portion of the data.