Editor’s Note: We revisited a blog from 2016 that seeks to tackle one of the biggest problems of dining out around Austin, Texas…mainly where is the best place to get your BBQ!
The classic 60’s rock band The Lovin’ Spoonful sang “Did you ever have to make up your mind? You pick up on one and leave the other one behind. It's not often easy and not often kind. Did you ever have to make up your mind?” Or in my case as designated concierge and chauffer for my hungry family, how do you best pick a place to eat that will keep the troops satisfied? It is not as simple as saying let’s just go get the best food in town that money can buy! This is a problem that can involve multiple criteria, especially when the cries of hunger start coming from the back seat! So, let’s do a study involving where to find the best of one of the culinary delicacies in Central Texas…mainly BBQ!
Texas BBQ refers to beef brisket that is smoked over a wood fire pit (often using hickory, pecan, oak or mesquite). Not only is it delicious but there are literally huge numbers of places to get BBQ around every corner. And every proud Texan has their favorites and will not hesitate to offer their opinion on where you should or should not go! But we will instead use statistical analysis on BBQ data around Austin, TX to help us find where to eat! Borrowing a page from the home shopping giant QVC, we will look for data that addresses three key dimensions of selection criteria…namely Quality, Value and Convenience! For our purposes Quality will be represented by Food Rating, Value will be represented by Cost, and Convenience will be represented by Distance.
Quality: The first time we did this analysis was in 2016 and we found that most common rating services (Yelp, Open Door, etc.) used ordinal “star” rating scales, where all places got grouped around three to four and a half stars. However, we found that the Zagat rating service used a better continuous 30-point scale. But now in 2024, Zagat has been sold and reborn as The Infatuation, but they still use a continuous format, now on a 10-point scale. We used a good sample of 15 popular Austin BBQ restaurants that had access to data.
Value: Comparing prices between restaurants can be tricky, as most good BBQ places offer different plate combinations that combine one to three types of meats along with sides. To come up with a way to fairly compare BBQ costs on an apples-to-apples basis, we just found the current price of getting half a pound of beef brisket from each rated restaurant.
Convenience: Distance is a good measure of convenience. In the 2016 study we used the distance from my house to the restaurants in miles. But as many pointed out, not everyone who visits Austin will be starting out from my neighborhood. So, I instead set the distance starting point from a good central tourist spot in town, the beautiful Texas State Capitol building. So, the distance was found in miles from the Texas Capitol to the restaurants in the study.
For our statistical analysis, we asked JMP to help select the dominant points in the data that best fit the most desirable features we want to see in a BBQ restaurant. Mainly we want to see those locations that would offer the highest food rating, at the lowest costs, with the shortest travel distances. We marked in red the rows for these selected restaurants and gave them a value of one in new indicator column labeled “Dominant.” See below for a snapshot of our collected datatable with dominant points indicated.
The first issue we encounter is deciding on the best way to visualize the data. As we have three dimensions of criteria (quality, value and convenience) our first choice was to look at graphs that could present things in a 3-D format. Using a 3-D Scatterplot, you can see below that there does seem to be a group of dominant points in red that stand out from the other ones. However, our eyes have trouble seeing with this graph where exactly the points are located within the three scales!
We next used the Graph Builder to get a little more flexibility to view our dimensions. Even with a traditional two-dimensional graph of one Y axis (food rating) and bottom x (cost) , we can take bring in the third dimension (distance) in another Graph Builder landing zone area. In this case putting miles on the top X creates nice “swim lanes” to help us better visualize the specifics of the points with different colors and markers for dominant points.
However, both graphs above do not allow easy viewing and selections. Luckily there is another graph type present in JMP called a Ternary Plot that is a two-dimensional representation of three components, scaled from 0 to 1. This graph is often used to represent the components of a mixture where all must add up to 1 (100%), such as with chemical solution additives. In our case it worked rather well to give us a clear view of our best selections for low cost, low distance and high food ratings. Not that it works best if all components in the graph are going in the same direction, so we replaced the “Food Rating” created a new column called “Food Rating Delta form Max” which is just the maximum rating (10) less the food rating. In this way all components are now on a “lower is best” scale. Points in red are still the dominant ones.
With a little interactive point labeling, we now can find a grouping of excellent BBQ restaurant choices (lowest distance, cost, and rating delta from max) on the bottom right lower edge. So, our best choice for low cost and high rating would be Interstellar BBQ and Brotherton’s Black Iron BBQ, which represent all the good eating in North Austin but would require a drive! But if we add close distance to the mix then Franklin’s BBQ, KG BBQ, and Leroy and Lewis Barbecue would come out as the best selections. In this updated ranking, it is interesting how some very small BBQ restaurants that even still operate out of food trailers (like KG and Leroy & Lewis) compete well with bigger and more established “brick-and-mortar” places (like Franklin’s).
So, the next time you are having to choose between things involving multiple options, don’t be afraid to address it in three dimensions…whether it is for deciding where to drive to eat...or even for some other big decision. Lastly as local Central Texas Troubadour Robert Earl Keen sings, “If you're feelin' puny, you don't know what to do. Treat yourself to some meat, get some barbecue!”
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