Data driven journalistic piece

Keenan Coffey

10/15/13

Journalism F

Data Driven Essay

Fast Food Competitors

I found it interesting to ask a group of people what their favorite fast food eateries would be. I was not sure what restaurant would combine both exceptional taste, and good prices. Living in the United States, I have had my share of happy meals, burgers, buckets of chicken, etc. My personal favorite eatery would be Wendys because of its quality of food. I asked an essential question, that targeted teenage students at Norton High School answered. I asked "If location was not a factor, where would your first choice in fast food be? What would you order? Why?"

I asked a very broad group of people in multiple classrooms at Norton High. I decided to ask my Spanish class, and their responses were as I hypothesized. I first asked Greg Phillips, and he responded with: "Probably Wendys", I knew he'd say this, "and I would order a greasy baconator because of how good it is." This raised a question in my mind. I thought, wow, maybe the amount of grease on a sandwhich persuades the consumer to keep coming back. I also asked Paul Caramanica, and he was on board the Wendys bandwagon. "I would go to Wendys, and get a pretzel bacon cheeseburger." I knew going into asking these questions a burger would be one of the most common choices. Based on a survey on ehowfoods.com, "a burger is the second most common choice behind fries". I interviewed one last male to ask the same questions. "I would go to Wendys because of how good their baconator is. I like how greasy it is which is concerning" Tony Chen stated. Based on this data retrieval, I noticed my hypothesis was accurate in saying Wendys is people's favorite fast food eatery.

I finished off the survey with three other individuals from my Spanish class. These three were members of the opposite sex, just to see how the data varied between genders. First, I asked Chloe Gill where she would go. Chloe said: "I'd go to Panera and get a bread bowl." Panera is apparently a fast food restaurant, which I did not know of, and cnbc.com confirmed to me that it is indeed one. I also asked Mia Coffman, who replied saying: "I would go to panera and get an italian panini." I asked Ashley Pellitier for my last person. She said: "I'd go to Panera and get a buffalo bleu panini." Gathering all of this data, I realized a very obvious trend amongst high school students at Norton High. I noticed that males would chose to go to Wendys, a females would chose to go to Panera. I know from past experiences that Wendys is not a very expensive place, and provides a customer with good food and decent service. I am not a regular customer at Panera, but the couple times I've been it was very mediocre. Therefore, by gathering data like this I have come to a conclusion that generally males prefer Wendys, whereas females prefer Panera Bread for fast food.