The Department of Data, a regular analysis of statistics on The Washington Post website, really hit the jackpot last week with a report about restaurant chains.
The story led with its most curious discovery: “Places that support Donald Trump also tend to have the most franchise foods. But why?”
The answer, it turns out, doesn’t have that much to do with the former president. But the website included information on restaurants and work trends in each state that is fascinating.
For example, Georgia Tech researchers rank Mississippi seventh nationally among states with the highest percentage of chain restaurants. The survey defines a chain as a company that operates at least 50 restaurants.
In Mississippi, 40% of restaurants in the state are part of a chain. Kentucky had the highest rate at 46%, followed by West Virginia, Alabama, Indiana, Kansas and Arkansas.
A check of the lowest percentages reveals a surprisingly large gap from the top of the list. Only 13% of Vermont’s restaurants are owned by a chain, and less than 20% are part of a chain in Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, New York and Washington, D.C.
The story also listed the most common restaurant cuisine in each state. Every resident of Mississippi will chuckle to learn that for almost every state in the South, including this one, fast food is the most popular. You go, Wendy’s!
The only exceptions to this trend among Southern states are Louisiana (seafood, naturally), Virginia (pizza), and Texas and Arkansas (part of a band of states stretching all the way to California that favor Mexican food).
To answer the puzzle about the link between support for Trump and more chain restaurants, it appears to be unrelated to presidential politics. Instead, it involves the percentage of the workforce that drives to their job.
“The places that drive the most tend to have the same high share of chain restaurants regardless of whether they voted for Trump or Biden,” the Post’s Andrew Van Dam reported. “As car commuting decreases, chain restaurants decrease at roughly the same rate, no matter which candidate most residents supported.”
One interesting observation is that in 2020, Trump won more counties where a higher percentage of people drive to work.
Here’s another good one: 83% of workers drive to work each day, but in Trump counties, 90% do. In Biden counties, it’s 80%.
It should be no surprise to learn that the state with the highest percentage of people who drive to work is — Mississippi, where nearly 94% of workers, no doubt because of the state’s rural nature, commute by car.
It is one of 10 states, plus Puerto Rico, where more than 90% of employees drive to work. The others, according to the Census Bureau, are almost exclusively Southern: Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee, West Virginia, South Carolina, Kentucky and Indiana.
A map with the story broke down commuter rates by county. In Pike County and each of the five Mississippi counties closest to it, 94% to 96% of employees use a car to get to work.
This information leads to several conclusions. First, highways continue to be the engine behind chain restaurants in many states. This has been true, as Van Dam noted, since Howard Johnson’s pioneered the concept back in the 1930s.
Also, people in “car-dominated spaces,” which seems like just about everywhere except maybe the biggest cities, tend to appreciate the quick service and reliable food that’s available at chain restaurants.
And finally, running a successful restaurant is a challenging task. That’s another reason the chains have become so strong: It’s a lot harder for an individual or a family to compete today.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
