As you all probably know, I’m a bit of a foodie, so I loved finding all the San Marcos restaurant data and looking at trends in San Marcos.
I used import.io for my data, which initially said it would take five hours to finish, and since I was on a school computer, I ended it less than an hour later. However, the restaurants it pulled were much more comprehensive than I originally thought. I went back through to see if there were any I needed to add, and after scanning Yelp, couldn’t see/think of any that weren’t already on my page.
It had to be cleaned up a lot, since many restaurants had more than one page, and usually the second was blank or with only one review. So I deleted those. There were also a lot that are no longer in existence, or potentially not opened yet. These pages had little to no information on them – the old ones usually had some photos and reviews, but very few.
I first used the Google Fusion charts to make a map of the locations. This was a lot easier than I expected and pulled my data for each location, so when you click on a pin, it’ll show the restaurant name and information.
Looking at the actual data I had, I made a pie chart (with High Charts) looking at what types of food made up what portion of the San Marcos food market. Spoiler alert: It’s mostly Mexican.
BBQ was disappointingly low. I expected there to be a larger portion (because I dislike BBQ, it feels like it’s everywhere ((You heard me. I. Don’t. Like. BBQ.))). Otherwise, San Marcos has mostly traditional American and Mexican food, followed by Asian food. I define how I categorized these in better detail on my site.
I made a chart with Chart.js looking at the pricing of San Marcos restaurants. Most San Marcos eateries are quite affordable since they have to appeal to the financially-conscious student population. There were no more than two dollar signs on any of the restaurants pulled, and most were one dollar sign, signifying that those restaurants have lower prices.
The last one I did was with the ratings of the San Marcos restaurants. No surprises there. Most were 3.5 or 4 stars, and none lower than a 2. There were a few 5 starts, but most of them had only a handful of reviews, so these were less impressive than many who had a 4 or 4.5 star rating with hundreds of reviews.
My site is obviously under construction, but I have my charts on my “breakdown” and “recommendations” pages. My home page will have a full-length story as well as some links and photos. My “about” page links to my “about” page on my personal website for now – and that website probably needs more work than this one does at the moment. But I plan on writing something unique to this project, why I chose it, why I am knowledgeable on the subject, and what the project is for.
I’d also like to add more recommendations to the “recommendations” page. I will either add my interactive element here or on the home page, where the user can answer questions as to what they’re looking for in a restaurant and have an answer (or several) presented to them.
Here is the sketch of my layout for my home page:
I plan to interview a few people around town about their favorites. I know some extremely healthy people and some who are extremely picky, so I feel like I can get a wide range of opinions. I’ll talk a bit about the healthy food San Marcos has to offer (still don’t have data for this, but considering adding a field for whether or not they have health-conscious options – it’d be easier than trying to determine how “healthy” a place is, for which there is a wide range of perceptions).
I plan on having a picture of each person I interview with a title and/or reason they’re being interviewed (i.e. picky eater, diabetic, nutritionist, etc.).