Taco Trends

We were tasked with a series of data and a request to tell a story, something which could provide a valuable point of view. Mexican food and Mexican culture has had a turbulent beginning with the United States, only recently becoming more accepted and even popularized within the last 50 years. With so many Mexican restaurants now in the game, it's important for any companies who have an interest in the market to understand any trends that might occur.

Trends can possibly be found anywhere. With the data given, we could have focused on a “who” question, a “what”, a “where” or even a “how”. For the project, we decided to examine a possible relation between population, Hispanic population, diverse population, and the number of restaurants that served tacos/burritos. A layer deeper we wish to examine the difference between the role of chains and of independent restaurants.

We used random cities for their data, keeping account of how many restaurants had taco/burritos options. We compared this to the US Census Bureau's reports of population and minorities in these cities. The problem only needed Excel to provide basic graphs to visualize the data trends.

The hardest part of the project was deciding on an idea and not being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data. To find what looks like a path in the middle of the woods. I am proud of the work I have put into it, although the answer came to be simpler than hoped. I did not overextend to more than necessary intricate ways to showcase this information.

I learned there can be a lot of open ended results that can come from data. What would be next is to expand the data and to search for other possible trends relating to political race relations and the consumer's interpretation to what true "Mexican food" is.