Hello again Andrew,
I'm glad you have such faith in my "intelligence", and I hope it turns
out to be deserved. I always try to provide my customers with the
best possible answers, but I admit that this one has been particularly
challenging.
As you requested, I've continued hunting for data on the numbers of
restaurants in different countries around the world. I've
concentrated on the countries that are either the most prosperous or
the most populous, as these will likely have the greatest number of
restaurants.
The information I give you below should be seen as our starting point.
Once you've had a look at it, just let me know if you need anything
else.
If you decide you do need additional information , give me as much
detail as possible on what you're after so I can best target any
follow-up research.
------------------------
There only appear to be concrete data on "numbers of restaurants" for
a few countries. I've listed them below, along with the address of
the website where the data came from:
CHINA..............................3.5 million restaurants
http://www.china.org.cn/english/BAT/37459.htm
INDIA..............................2.0 million or more
http://www.rediff.com/money/2003/feb/18tourism.htm
JAPAN..............................1.0 million or more
http://www.asij.ac.jp/middle/ac/ss/8ah/hypertokyo/
1999/p3c/daniel-1a.html
UNITED STATES........................870,000
http://www.restaurant.org/research/ind_glance.cfm
SWITZERLAND, FRANCE, GERMANY.........200,000 or more
http://www.infogastro.com/default.asp?lang=3
AUSTRALIA.............................14,199
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/7b551e3538ad3811ca25695b00009159?OpenDocument
These numbers alone, when added up, come to about 7.6 million
restaurants.
This is in the same ballpark as the IH&RA estimates of 8.1 million
restaurants in the world as a whole, though it's likely the real total
is considerably higher, since the data are a few years old and the
global economy, though slowed down, has still grown quite a bit since
the late 1990's.
In fact, we can use some of the IH&RA results to fill in many of the
blanks. In the report I referenced, "The Restaurant Revolution", they
write that:
"The low-income group of countries has approximately one restaurant
unit per 618
people; the upper-middle income group has one restaurant unit per 268
people. The average number of outlets across all countries is one
restaurant unit per 477 people."
Using these data in this way:
618 people per restaurant in poor countries
477 people per restaurant in middle-income countries
268 people per restaurant in upper-income countries
we can estimate the number of restaurants in countries for which there
is no available data.
For instance, take the three most populous countries in the world,
China, India, and the United States. We can use the IH&RA data to
estimate the number of restaurants in these countries, and compare it
to the actual counts in the list that I provided above.
-------------------
We can compute that China, a middle-income country with a population
of 1.2 billion people, would be expected to have:
[ 1.2 billion / 477 ] = 2.5 million restaurants,
reasonably within the ballpark of the 3.5 million restaurants in the
"official" estimates.
-------------------
Similarly, India, a poor country with 1.0 billion people, would be
expected to have:
[ 1.0 billion / 618 ] = 1.6 million restaurants, which compares well
with the number of 2 million that I gave above.
-------------------
Lastly, in a prosperous country like the US, with a population of 286
million, we would expect:
[ 286 million / 268 ] = 1.1 million restaurants, which again, compares
reasonably well with the "official" count of 870,000.
-------------------
Using this approach, we can estimate the numbers of restaurants for
the rest of the world's most populous countries:
COUNTRY............POPULATION.......ECONOMY.....RESTAURANTS
Indonesia..............232 million.....poor.......375,000
Brazil.................176 million.....middle.....369,000
Pakistan...............147 million.....poor.......238,000
Russia.................144 million.....middle.....301,000
Bangladesh.............133 million.....poor.......215,000
Nigeria................129 million.....poor.......209,000
Mexico.................103 million.....middle.....216,000
Philippines.............84 million.....poor.......136,000
Vietnam.................81 million.....poor.......131,000
Egypt...................70 million.....poor.......113,000
Ethiopia................67 million.....poor.......108,000
Turkey..................67 million.....middle.....140,000
Iran....................66 million.....poor.......107,000
Thailand................62 million.....poor.......100,000
United Kingdom..........59 million.....high.......220,000
Italy...................57 million.....high.......212,000
Congo...................55 million.....poor........89,000
Ukraine.................48 million.....middle.....101,000
S. Korea................48 million.....high.......179,000
--------------------------------------
No doubt, you will have some questions about all this, and perhaps
some requests for follow-up information. As I said earlier, I want to
provide you with the best possible answer. So please...ask away. If
there is anything I can do to help you further, let me know, and I am
at your service.
pafalafa-ga
search strategy: Google searches on --
"million restaurants"
"thousand restaurants"
"000 restaurants"
[restaurant industry statistics] |
