How to Scrape Toronto Restaurants Map Data by Category using Web Scraping?

For scraping the restaurant’s data in Toronto, it is necessary to scrape the latitude and longitude of all the Toronto Restaurants available on the Yelp directory and then plot them on a public map. This could be filtered using the restaurant’s category.

How to Perform Scraping for Toronto Restaurants Map Data?

The Data

The data will be extracted from Yelp’s Toronto Restaurant categories page. The project will click into each category on the website and retrieve all of the restaurants that display, including their latitude, longitude, number of reviews, rating, location, phone number, restaurant, and pricing range.

Creating the Map

You can try various options on how to plot the data, such as Google Maps API, but the ultimate option would be to place it on public maps.

What will You Search for?

Toronto is recognized for its diversity, with BBC Radio describing it as the world’s most varied metropolis. Over 50 % of the population was raised from outside Canada, with 232 different countries represented. Yelp’s 132 restaurant categories represent the diverse ethnicities that co-exist in the city.

Ethnic Communities

Various neighborhoods in Toronto that correlate to distinct communities, as per Wikipedia’s List of Neighborhoods in Toronto, such as Little India, Little Italy, Little Portugal, Little Tibet, Greektown, Chinatown, Koreatown, and Little Jamaica. You can search for the bulk restaurants in their respective locations by looking for the perimeters of every neighborhood and comparing them to other eateries on the map.

Few of the restaurant types can be looked out in various neighborhoods:

Some restaurant categories are concentrated mostly in ethnic neighborhoods:

The bulk of Portuguese eateries is concentrated in and around Toronto’s Little Portugal neighborhood.

There aren’t many Tibetan restaurants in the city, but there is still a concentration of them on Queen Street West’s extreme west end.

Maps showing Portuguese restaurants (left) and Tibetan eateries (right) with an estimate of Little Portugal marked (right)

Some have concentrations in several locations:

There is a concentration of Greek eateries along the Danforth in Greektown, but there seems to be a quite number in the downtown Financial District as well.

Chinese eateries may be found throughout the city. Clusters may be found in the downtown region near Chinatown, north of Yonge Street, and in Markham’s north-east.

Korean restaurants may be found mostly in the downtown area, with a concentration on Bloor Street West in Koreatown and another to the north of Yonge Street.

Greek restaurants with Greektown featured on the left, Chinese restaurants with Chinatown emphasized in the middle, and Korean restaurants with Koreatown highlighted on the right (right)

Some didn’t appear to be clustered in any way:

While there are several Caribbean eateries in Little Jamaica, there are also plenty of in the city’s downtown and east areas. Outside of the central center, there are extremely few on Yonge Street and its environs.

Little Jamaica is shown on maps of Jamaican eateries.

It is also noticed that several eateries from various cultures are concentrated in particular areas:

On the Danforth, there is a cluster of Ethiopian eateries.

Just west of downtown are also plenty of Tapas and Spanish eateries.

There are several South American cuisines around the Humber River and at the city’s west end.

Ethiopian restaurants (left), Spanish and Tapas restaurants (middle), and Latin American restaurants (right) – Argentine, Brazilian, Colombian, Latin American, Peruvian, and Salvadoran (right)

Financial District

There might be a noticeable cluttering of Sandwiches, Cafes, Soup, and Salad in the Financial District while clicking through the various categories. These are most likely the eateries where people have lunch throughout the workday. In the downtown area, sandwiches, salads, soups, and cafes are popular.

The Waffle Mile

The Waffle Mile restaurants will be noted in green.

Vegandale

There are various vegan restaurants in Parkdale. They tend to be primarily concentrated on downtown’s western outskirts, while Parkdale doesn’t really have more vegan eateries. However, the names are derived from forthcoming eateries that do not yet exist on the map. Parkdale is marked on maps featuring vegan eateries.

Many other fascinating restaurant category tendencies can be found on the map.

For restaurant data scraping services, you can ask Foodspark for a Food data scraper to recreate this and comparable applications or request a quote!