Hi Jason,
Thank you very much for your kind words!
It depends on how these criteria is stored. You will very likely need either (or both) custom field and custom taxonomy term filters. The categories are very likely the taxonomies, and the locations is more likely a custom field, or at least usually it is like that.
First, check out this documentation as well about filter layouts. You can also use this option to completely hide the search input, if you don’t need it.