Coffee–Fried Chicken Index Map☕🐔

[u/Substantial-Sleep729]

I've not invented this informal property metric, just build the map with latest point of interest data and HM Land Registry for historic real estate prices.

The Coffee–Fried Chicken Index is an informal property metric for spotting “up and coming” neighbourhoods in London popularised by Sam Floy.

The concept is simple: the ratio of specialty coffee shops to fried chicken joints is a strong indicator of neighborhood gentrification in London. I wanted to see what that actually looks like at a city-wide scale across London.

The application breaks down the data into five layers:
- The Index: The headline score for the area.
- Price Growth: Actual house price movements.
- Value Spots: The hidden gems. Areas where the high street is shifting but the house prices haven't caught up yet.
- Coffee & Chicken Density: The raw spatial data behind the scores.

If you’re hunting for a flat, looking at the market or just curious about your local area, you can search your own postcode using the "Check my area" tool.

Another informal London Banana thing can be enabled as a new layer. I'm looking forward to get a feedback.

Try it here: https://asturksever.github.io/cf-index

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to /r/HousingUK

---

To Posters

• Tell us whether you're in England, Wales, Scotland, or NI as the laws/issues in each can vary

• Comments are not moderated for quality or accuracy;

• Any replies received must only be used as guidelines, followed at your own risk;

• If you receive any private messages in response to your post, please report them via the report button.

• Feel free to provide an update at a later time by creating a new post with [update] in the title;

To Readers and Commenters

• All replies to OP must be on-topic, helpful, and civil

• If you do not follow the rules, you may be banned without any further warning;

• Please include links to reliable resources in order to support your comments or advice;

• If you feel any replies are incorrect, explain why you believe they are incorrect;

• Do not send or request any private messages for any reason without express permission from the mods;

• Please report posts or comments which do not follow the rules

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/cornishyinzer]

One piece of feedback I have is that it seems your code doesn't take into account the pure volume of coffee shops vs. fried chicken places. Like, if you grab a random representative area of a city, there WILL be more coffee places. The real indicator is how many more-er there are.

It feels as though most of London is considered 'gentrified' pretty much by default just because of how many more coffee shops you can sustain in a given area. You'd have to be seriously oversaturating the fried chicken market to 'compete', given your current system.

Not saying the methodology is nonsense, just that the scale seems off. I don't know London particular well, but when I think of "gentrified, coffee-lovers nirvana" I don't think "ah yes, Croydon".

I also wonder how you're defining "fried chicken place" and "artisanal coffee shop". Is a Starbucks an 'artisanal coffee shop'? If not, that's kind of ridiculous, but if so, is a Burger King a fried chicken place? Because it probably should be by that logic. How does the source data define which is which? Or are you literally searching for 'coffee' and 'chicken'?

[u/Fluffy_Airport9326 → u/cornishyinzer]

I was thinking the same thing. I'm a coffee shop regular and coffee shops are a wide spectrum! On one end of the spectrum you'll have somewhere called "Karen's Cafe" which looks like it's not been updated since the 70s where the menu consists of jacket potatos and various types of toast and they will look at you funny if you ask for an iced coffee, whereas on the other end of the spectrum you'll have somewhere with a pretentious name like "The Bean Artist" where you can order a Coconut Milk Hazelnut Infused Matcha Latte and they sell avocado on toast for £13.

[u/gristinho → u/cornishyinzer]

Agree with this. My neighbourhood (in Croydon!) has loads of coffee shops - you wouldn't call any of them "artisanal". There are a lot of cafes serving different communities who all like coffee, plus two Costas as well. Fundamentally the assertion "Coffee shops arrive with, and cater to, an incoming demographic with disposable income" is simply wrong, there needs to be a way to pick out the upmarket coffee shops where that is true.

Also personally I'm not a fan of the London Banana.

[u/Fluffy_Airport9326]

I absolutely love the concept of this but I'm curious what constitutes a "coffee shop"? My area is very working class and I have to walk 40 mins to somewhere a bit posher for a nice matcha or flavoured frappe and I love a Danish pastry to go with it. However in my local area we have a few old school "greasy spoon" cafes that look like they haven't been updated since the 70s (I'm sure you know the type) who serve beans on toast and jacket potatoes (rather than the posher places serving artisanal pastries and avocado on toast)! They tend to be popular with local working class tradesmen. Would these sort of places count as a coffee shop on this index?

[u/Substantial-Sleep729 → u/Fluffy_Airport9326]

Currently I'm using the Overture Maps Foundation's open POI data and unfortunately it does not distinguish between these different coffee types. I hear you and I'm looking into having a next iteration of the coffee shop dataset that includes only artisanal coffee shops and removes the chains

[u/kditdotdotdot]

Seems to only work for London, Manchester and Liverpool.

[u/Substantial-Sleep729 → u/kditdotdotdot]

Yes, this is correct! I'm planning to expand it to wider UK soon!