The usual chainrings on a road bike have 53 teeth on the large gear and 39 on the smaller. A compact double is 50 and 34, sometimes 36. A triple (mountain bike) gets that down to 28 teeth on the smallest gear.

Gearing is the ratio front to back with lower numbers being easier to climb. So a 28 tooth small ring with a 28 tooth cog has a ratio of 1. With the 39 tooth ring of the standard road bike and a large 28 in back the ratio is 1.4, which means that it's 40% harder to go up the hill (at a given cadence). I personally don't think that a 1.4 gear ratio is adequate to climb 500 feet in two miles, not on a daily basis.

With road bikes the cogs (in back) can go up to 28 teeth, or sometimes only 26 teeth, limited by the road derailleur. To get that larger than that, we generally need to replace the DR as well as the cassette.

Replacing the rings, the cogs and the rear derailleur after the fact gets pricey. Worse if you switch to a triple ring because you then need new shifters. So I'd strongly advise getting a bike with the low gear ratio to begin with, probably a triple ring with 28 or bigger granny gear (on the cassette). That likely means "hybrid" (mtb gearing). It's also possible, though unusual, to find entry level road bikes like that with mountain bike gearing.