Retail Gap & Detail Household Spending on Dining out e.g. "Lunch at Full Service Restaurant"

[ChrisVe]

Looks like ESRI did it again....first the retail gap analysis was cut, and now it looks like detailed household spending on dining out/restaurants categories have been cut too, see below from last year. Either those have been cut or hidden so well that no one can find them. If they are still there, can someone please point me to them? I would appreciate this a lot. If not, and those are gone, it looks like ESRI is becoming less and less useful for any meaningful retail and restaurant analysis. Thank you.

2023 Meals at Restaurants/Other (Avg)

2023 Lunch Away from Home (Avg)

2023 Lunch at Fast Food/Take-Out/Delivery (Avg)

2023 Lunch at Full Service Restaurants (Avg)

2023 Lunch at Employer/School Cafe (Avg)

2023 Lunch at Vending/Mobile Vendors (Avg)

2023 Dinner Away from Home (Avg)

2023 Dinner at Full Service Restaurants (Avg)

2023 Dinner at Fast Food/Take-Out/Delivery (Avg)

2023 Dinner at Employer/School Cafe (Avg)

2023 Dinner at Vending/Mobile Vendors (Avg)

[HelenThompson]

Hi Chris
Thanks for the comments and we understand the impact in changing data. Unfortunately the retail/restaurant data you are referencing has dependencies on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) surveys. As we explained in the release notes the 2022 BLS survey redefined food away from home expenditure items by removing the meal type distinction of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. This includes those provided by employers and at home.

You can find the release notes here which explains the 20 variables which were removed. We replaced these variables with the four new fields which are just a collapsing of detail by dropping the meal type dimension but still retaining where food purchases were made:

• X1156 Food and Nonalcoholic Beverages at Fast Food
• X1157 Food and Nonalcoholic Beverages at Full Service Restaurants
• X1158 Food and Nonalcoholic Beverages at Vending Machines and Mobile Vendors
• X1159 Food and Nonalcoholic Beverages at Employer

We also recommend that users look at attitudes towards food purchase to supplement market potential and spending at restaurants.

Apologies that our release information was not found, or clear, which caused this issues. We understand how frustrating deletion of or changes to data is, as we too have models and analysis that used these characteristics in our work. Unfortunately these changes are due to supplier information deprecation from the US Government and the impacts are felt by all demographic data providers and users.

Best wishes

Helen