In this installment of Food Intelligence: Under the Hood, we're taking a look at restaurant data collection, one of Tastewise's special capabilities that is hard at work behind the scenes of Tastewise Growth.

Today's guest author is Yoav, one of our fantastic data analysts. Read on to better understand what makes our foodservice solution tick, and how our data collection methods provide the most value for your pipeline.

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At Tastewise, we can tell you all about what’s happening in the restaurant industry all across the US and the UK - updated every week so that you know in real-time what is going on in and around more than 700,000 restaurants.

How do we do it?

At the beginning of each week, we start collecting data about every restaurant and every dish (or menu item) across our geographical data sets. During this process, we document millions of dishes and aggregated data points about restaurant locations across multiple platforms - among them the four primary delivery platforms in the United States (Grubhub, Doordash, UberEats and Postmates) and three delivery platforms in the United Kingdom (UberEats, Deliveroo and JustEat). After completing this process, we blend in social media data about the restaurant, so you can know not only what is happening on the menu itself, but what are people saying about the restaurant location - all in real-time.

But… how can we know what’s connected to what?

In other words, how do we keep track of what happens across different platforms within a specific location, and “connect the dots”? If a restaurant works with two different delivery platforms, how do we connect between the two?

This is where Tastewise’s AI capabilities come in handy. Using data-science magic, we can tell for each and every restaurant how many delivery platforms they work with, all of the social media data profiles available around the restaurant, and all of the contact details where you can reach out to the restaurant (including email, LinkedIn, phone number(s) and more). As mentioned, all this data is aggregated, so you can follow up all in one place. Even cooler than that - we use data science to cluster chain locations under the same page so you know all about what’s going on there - but that might be for a different blogpost :)

How do you know what changes over time?

Next, Tastewise uses the aggregated data about restaurants in the all-in-one format to record changes in every restaurant on a weekly basis. In this process (or in the dev lingo: “job”), the week’s data is put as a new layer on top of previous week’s data, so we know what exactly changed in every location across the US and the UK. Comparing the week’s data with the one before, Tastewise can tell you which restaurant added what items to its menu, what changes we’ve seen in pricing, and which restaurants started (or stopped) partnering with delivery platforms. Tastewise also tracks which restaurants open and close, so you can always tap into new business opportunities.

This is a bit overwhelming for me… how do I know where to start?

Not to worry - luckily, we got you covered! Using the Tastewise filters, you can adjust according to your category, location, audience, etc. and play around to make sure you get only what you need: a list of restaurants that will help you to grow your business. Targeting Italian restaurants that are single locations in Los Angeles? No problem. Looking for restaurants in Manchester that still don’t have delivery partners but do have an Instagram page? You got it. Need to reach out to high-end restaurants that started partnering with a delivery platform in the last two weeks? It’s all there.

Mix-and-match what’s best for you, and save the preset so you can come back and continue making data-driven decisions - all in the palm of your hand, in real time.

Ready to use the Tastewise solution for foodservice?

Read more about Tastewise Growth here, then be in touch to request your personal demo. As a bonus, we're throwing in 25 free foodservice leads!

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