Local Government Offers Big Data for Prospective Restaurant and Café Owners

(image: KobizMedia/ Korea Bizwire)

SUWON, South Korea, April 5 (Korea Bizwire) – One of the biggest challenges for prospective restaurant and café owners is to pick the right spot. The Gyeonggi Provincial Government has decided to provide some insight for these candidates to help them make the best decisions using local big data. 

The data, relating to 5,517 commercial districts in the province, is based on some 532 million records of KB Card’s credit card data, 124 million records from KT Corps.’ foot traffic data, and 740 million additional records from five of the province’s institutions, including tourist information. 

The insight provided includes an analysis of growth potential (sales growth or decline), stability (number of competitors in the area and their average years of operation), average purchase amount per customer, regional preference trends, and attractiveness of top ten food and beverage businesses – bars, Chinese and Japanese food, snack bars (i.e. gimbap, tteokbokki), fried chicken, coffeehouse, fast food, bakery, western cuisine, and Korean food. 

At the moment, the data can be obtained from one of the 11 Small Business Development Centers in the province, but officials are considering putting the material online for easier access. More detailed information such as consumer characteristics, official land value, sales figures for individual businesses, and peak and off time or seasons will also be provided in the near future. 

“We’re not only offering objective data for choosing a business and its location, but also information that allows prospective businesspeople to make comparisons with other businesses and commercial districts, which we believe will help bring down business failure rates,” said an official. 

By Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)