This is an interesting map showing parts of the country where bars outnumber grocery stores. Rock on Wisconsin and Illinois, you've earned it. It looks like Mass. is quite bar friendly to in an otherwise non-bar environment.
We were quite surprised, however, when we did a simple comparison between grocery stores and bars to discover a remarkable geographically phenomenon. We had expected that grocery stores would outnumber bars and for most parts of North America that is the case. But we could also clearly see the "beer belly of America" peeking out through the "t-shirt of data".
Starting in Illinois, the beer belly expands up into Wisconsin and first spreads westward through Iowa/Minnesota and then engulfs Nebraska, and the Dakotas before petering out (like a pair of love handles) in Wyoming and Montana.
The clustering was so apparent that we wanted to check how it compared to the "official" data on this activity. So we gathered 2007 Census Country Business Pattern on the number of establishments listed in NACIS code 722410 (Drinking places (alcoholic beverages)) and divided by Census estimates for state population totals for 2009 and found remarkable correspondence with our data.
I meant that's an unfair map because I'm sure it doesn't include the ever popular XRD (or whatever its equivalent is) license common in the South.
"A lot of individuals" have forced the sale of liquor and alcohol mostly to restaurants who have the capital to have 150-250 seat capacity to qualify for the restaurant license. This is such a huge expense that you need investors (who you can gaurantee you can turn a profit) or you need the backing of a large chain with the necessary investment capital to build restaurants that big.
Mind you, there are a lot of bars who operate facetiously as a restaurant in order to maintain that license.
Particularly in some areas of Florida-- for instance-- the cost of obtaining a full liquor license is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And while bars are big profit makers, it would be hard to make a profit with that kind of base expense.
The other issue is in some areas in the US, new liquor licenses are only granted on a per population basis (meaning one liquor license per every X thousand of residents). And some of these are specifically county laws. So, there's another initial problem that a "downtown" area with the infrastructure (parking, sewage) necessary to handle several bar based businesses may not have enough liquor licenses to grant each bar a license because a majority of the residents live in the suburbs.
And this goes back to the other point, you need tons of money to be able to make an establishment big enough to maintain the income necessary to make a large bar, int the middle of no where, profitable while being able to afford the infrastructure necessary to maintain it (parking lots, specialty sewage).
I'm sure if you counted every TGIF, Chili's and [insert middle-class family style eatery that's really a bar]... states like Florida would be solid red.
What would be interesting and no doubt sad would be to compare bars and grocery stores in dense low-income inner city neighborhoods - I imagine every single comparison would show incredibly easy access to alcohol, with little to no access to fresh produce.
It's a bit of an odd ratio, I think the number is highly dependent on demographics and local cultural contexts so it's hard to compare... Grocery stores are much larger in scale and have a broader geographical reach than bars, and number of bars really doesn't speak so much to which States drink the most, but rather which States have the largest proportion of middle class...
Grocery stores carry beer and wine as well as food, and in lots of places, they drink more in the home... Bars being expensive I think they tend towards the middle class, middle income, and a certain age demographic... Also colleges and college students...
Culturally, I think bars speak to a social culture that centers around going out rather than staying at home... More urban social scene, less suburban social activities like barbecuing etc. which you'd find more of in the South outside of the larger cities...
Grocery Stores V. Bars
This is an interesting map showing parts of the country where bars outnumber grocery stores. Rock on Wisconsin and Illinois, you've earned it. It looks like Mass. is quite bar friendly to in an otherwise non-bar environment.
That's an unfair map.
they pulled it from floating sheep http://www.floatingsheep.org/2010/02/beer-belly-of-america.html
We were quite surprised, however, when we did a simple comparison between grocery stores and bars to discover a remarkable geographically phenomenon. We had expected that grocery stores would outnumber bars and for most parts of North America that is the case. But we could also clearly see the "beer belly of America" peeking out through the "t-shirt of data".
Starting in Illinois, the beer belly expands up into Wisconsin and first spreads westward through Iowa/Minnesota and then engulfs Nebraska, and the Dakotas before petering out (like a pair of love handles) in Wyoming and Montana.
The clustering was so apparent that we wanted to check how it compared to the "official" data on this activity. So we gathered 2007 Census Country Business Pattern on the number of establishments listed in NACIS code 722410 (Drinking places (alcoholic beverages)) and divided by Census estimates for state population totals for 2009 and found remarkable correspondence with our data.
I meant that's an unfair map because I'm sure it doesn't include the ever popular XRD (or whatever its equivalent is) license common in the South.
"A lot of individuals" have forced the sale of liquor and alcohol mostly to restaurants who have the capital to have 150-250 seat capacity to qualify for the restaurant license. This is such a huge expense that you need investors (who you can gaurantee you can turn a profit) or you need the backing of a large chain with the necessary investment capital to build restaurants that big.
Mind you, there are a lot of bars who operate facetiously as a restaurant in order to maintain that license.
Particularly in some areas of Florida-- for instance-- the cost of obtaining a full liquor license is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And while bars are big profit makers, it would be hard to make a profit with that kind of base expense.
The other issue is in some areas in the US, new liquor licenses are only granted on a per population basis (meaning one liquor license per every X thousand of residents). And some of these are specifically county laws. So, there's another initial problem that a "downtown" area with the infrastructure (parking, sewage) necessary to handle several bar based businesses may not have enough liquor licenses to grant each bar a license because a majority of the residents live in the suburbs.
And this goes back to the other point, you need tons of money to be able to make an establishment big enough to maintain the income necessary to make a large bar, int the middle of no where, profitable while being able to afford the infrastructure necessary to maintain it (parking lots, specialty sewage).
I'm sure if you counted every TGIF, Chili's and [insert middle-class family style eatery that's really a bar]... states like Florida would be solid red.
To further prove this point that this practice is still actively pursued by the restaurant industry...
Burger King is even jumping on this bandwagon with Whopped Bar.
http://www.bk.com/en/us/campaigns/whopper-bar.html
p.s. the music is awesome!
What would be interesting and no doubt sad would be to compare bars and grocery stores in dense low-income inner city neighborhoods - I imagine every single comparison would show incredibly easy access to alcohol, with little to no access to fresh produce.
It's a bit of an odd ratio, I think the number is highly dependent on demographics and local cultural contexts so it's hard to compare... Grocery stores are much larger in scale and have a broader geographical reach than bars, and number of bars really doesn't speak so much to which States drink the most, but rather which States have the largest proportion of middle class...
Grocery stores carry beer and wine as well as food, and in lots of places, they drink more in the home... Bars being expensive I think they tend towards the middle class, middle income, and a certain age demographic... Also colleges and college students...
Culturally, I think bars speak to a social culture that centers around going out rather than staying at home... More urban social scene, less suburban social activities like barbecuing etc. which you'd find more of in the South outside of the larger cities...
It's cheaper to buy alcohol at a grocery store...
or in a package store, if you're in MA
apparently wisconsin allows minors to drink alcohol under adult supervision?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alcohol_laws_of_the_United_States_by_state
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