Americans are food obsessed. Why? With the massive amount of information now available to us about food and nutrition, along with mounting health concerns over American eating, we've launched us into a foodie frenzy like never before. Considering the food and restaurant industry was recently valued at $709.2 billion, we'll see everything from delivery to luxury restaraunt apps taking full advantage of the opportunities to engage with consumers. As the experts in location and context, we know that the places in any given area reflect the lifestyles of people who live and visit there, so we decided to dig a little deeper into our database of food venues.  

Our database of places power our Context product, and gives contextual awareness to any mobile app that wants to leverage location. We carefully curate these places - organized by Google AdWords taxonomy - and score them for quality so that apps can know the location, category and type of user that visits a particular food store or restaurant. We put our data to work investigating how American dining differs from coast to coast in the US.

We set out to answer our questions about:

• How population density impacts the presence of food venues in each US city and state

• How the presence of different types of restaurants in an area reflects the lifestyle there

• Which states over-index against a national average for different food venue types.

About the Analysis

The methodology for unearthing these insights relied on a national index of food shop locations per capita. By looking into the distribution of venues per person rather than state area, we get a better representation of what food category preferences dominate in any state.

To create it, we divided the count of each food venue category in each state with that state's population. We compared those food venue-per-capita values for each state to the corresponding national per capita value for each food category. In general, we found that the states with a larger share of their population living in urban environments tend to over-index in many categories, while more rural states skew toward fewer retail venues per capita.  

About Skykook Venues

Our venue database is a core part of our Context SDK. Our customers geofence our venues by brand and by category, creating dynamic user experiences and local notifications that increase user engagement. We build Personas based on the venues users visit, enabling advertisers to optimize their inventory value and deliver relevant content. To learn more about what Skyhook can do for your product, contact us.