The popular food and restaurant review website, Yelp, has recently created a tool that allows users to be able to take a look at the various food trends that have been occurring over the past decade and where they are now. This was only made possible because of the data that Yelp has been collecting for the past ten years of its existence. In a way it is a bit like collecting census data but for the food world and what people are interested in.
The program and charts Yelp created actually allow you to look at things such as what kinds of food were looked up more in a particular month for a certain region, such as a single city like Los Angeles. You can also just look at the overall national statistics of what was popular, such as food trucks being the craze only a few years ago, while cronuts were the craze around the same time but just for New York.
The program is called Yelp Trends and it takes a look through various charts and could actually end up offering some important information for caterers and other people in the food industry. In particular it could actually help with determining what the next food craze might be, or what trend is picking up quickly to jump on it before it falls off.
Of course, it could end up not supplying all that much other than an amusing thing to look at, especially compared to just going to expos in the food industry to see what trends food makers are focusing on rather than food consumers. Plus the information offered only focuses on what people on Yelp were looking up, and not necessarily what they were eating or why they were looking it up. So the Yelp system doesn’t offer all the best of data and certainly won’t replace just seeing the trends on your own through national news or other means. But it still is an interesting tool to try out at least.
–Rich
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2014/07/28/yelp-data-reveals-truth-behind-popular-food-trends/