Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a dataset tracking the prevalence of chain and independent restaurants across the United States. The dataset contains 392,078 independent restaurants and 313,544 chain restaurants and lists their cuisine, hours, location, and frequency. According to the researchers’ analysis, regions with higher rates of chain restaurants were likely to have low walkability, concentrations of college-age students, and a high percentage of voters for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, while regions with higher rates of independent restaurants were likely to host highly educated, racially diverse, and wealthy populations and have pedestrian-friendly environments or tourist attractions.
Image credit: Flickr user Lisa Davis
