Exploring SimplyMap Data: Which US Locations Dine Out the Most?
With over 75,000 variables in SimplyMap, you can find virtually any information you want. This week, we take a look at which U.S. locations spend the most money eating at restaurants or carrying out. Here’s how we did it and what we found.
The variable used was, “Meals at restaurants, carry outs and other (Household Average), 2014.” This variable can be found using this path in SimplyMap: Consumer Expenditure » In 2010 Geographies » Food » Food Away from Home » At Restaurants, Carry-Out, Etc.
Before we rank other geographies, let’s view the nation at large.
This provides a great overview, and we can see that a number of counties, mostly focused in the Northeast and West, lead the way for average household spending on dining out. We can analyze the data further by ranking these counties, using the “Make Ranking from Map” feature, which can be accessed from the Actions menu near the upper right corner of the Map panel.
Selecting, “Make Ranking from Map” yielded the following top 10 counties:
It looks like Loudoun County, VA spends the most amount of money dining out at restaurants in the United States.
Next, we wanted to view the same variable by city. Use the Analyze data by: menu at the top of the report to change the geographic unit to cities (note that you can also choose States, Zip Codes, or even Census Tracts if you want information about a specific local area).
When we switched to city, and applied a data filter to only show cities with more than 50,000 residents (read more about our data filter here), we were left with the following cities:
This information, combined with some additional research in SimplyMap, could be helpful in understanding dining habits in your study area, or even in siting a new business. SimplyMap combines analytical insight from reports like these with the visual impact of compelling maps in your research to help you understand, analyze, and visualize your data.
More from SimplyAnalytics
Posted on May 10, 2016 by Admin
One benefit of data and applications like SimplyMap is the ability to visualize information. In this week’s report, we’ll take a quick look at some branding preferences in contiguous Amer...
Posted on Dec 08, 2017 by Admin
Good afternoon, readers! This week we’re going to talk about project management in SimplyAnalytics and how to best take advantage of it. Why are projects needed? Many users have multiple...
Posted on Jan 05, 2018 by Admin
The SimplyAnalytics team is looking forward to exhibiting at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference 2018! Stop by the SimplyAnalytcs booth (115T) and take a look at our newest o...
Posted on Dec 15, 2014 by Admin
Visit the SimplyMap team at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Chicago late January. We will be at booth #2824 offering product demonstrations, tips & tricks, and of course Ghirardelli Choc...
Posted on Dec 06, 2009 by Admin
ALA's Choice Magazine, publisher of independent reviews of products and services for academic libraries, released a new review of SimplyMap in the December 2009 edition. The reviewer, Car...
Posted on May 17, 2016 by Admin
This week’s SimplyMap report is a quick reader challenge. Can you guess what the map of the United States below is depicting? Keep in mind the legend colors - lighter is less, and darker ...
Posted on Jan 08, 2018 by Admin
The SimplyAnalytics team will be exhibiting at ALA Midwinter in Denver February 9-12. Stop by booth 2152 for a visit and a tour of SimplyAnalytics, the best-in-class analytics and data vi...
Posted on Nov 11, 2015 by Admin
Inspired by a recent help desk ticket, we wanted to discuss how users may utilize SimplyMap to identify relationships between unique variables. For example, does having a college degree s...
Posted on May 25, 2010 by Admin
The American Library Association 2010 Annual Conference is coming and the GRI team is gearing up for another great event this summer. We will be in Washington, D.C. again this year, June ...
Posted on Jun 27, 2009 by Admin
The library faculty at Regent University in Virginia recently spotlighted SimplyMap in their Library Faculty Recommendations blog, highlighting its powerful ability to create professional...




