Nereden yiyorsan osun: Restoran menüsü ve kullanıcı yorumlarından sosyoekonomik statü tahmini

Our culinary habits and traditions have always been related to our social norms, culture, and even personal details such as personality. In this study, restaurant data related to pita and pizza restaurants from Ankara found on the leading online food ordering system in Turkey, Yemeksepeti, are collected, enriched with other data, and analyzed. Cuisine-specific lexicons are created to vectorize restaurant menus; biterm topic modeling is used to model user reviews; various education rates or realty listing prices are used as a proxy for socioeconomic status. Statistical tests and random forest models are used to see the relationship between restaurants and their cuisine or location characteristics. The findings suggest that restaurant data can be used to some extent to make predictions about the district and the socioeconomic status of the district or the neighborhood. They also reveal that menu and statistical features are more distinguishing for pizza restaurants while comment and statistical features are more distinguishing for pita restaurants. It is found that pita restaurants are menu-wise less diverse and more similar to each other, neighborhood-wise more diverse, and they are more about getting the monetary value while pizza restaurants care more about menu curation. While side dish preferences and satisfactions for pita restaurants may be tied to the socioeconomic status, pizza restaurants respond more to user reviews when they are located in a higher status neighborhood. This study also provides some implications and further questions for future studies.