Patent ID: 8595050

Claim:
A method of determining competitors for a first restaurant within a database of restaurants, wherein each restaurant in the database has a location, an order history, a cuisine type and a menu comprising a plurality of menu items, the method operating within a computer and comprising the steps of: i) retrieving a plurality of restaurants from the database over a network interface wherein the network interface is coupled to a processor of the computer; ii) filtering, by the processor, the plurality of restaurants to produce a first set of restaurants within a radius of the location of the first restaurant; iii) filtering, by the processor, the first set of restaurants to produce a second set of restaurants with a similar cuisine as the first restaurant; iv) associating, by the processor, each menu item of each restaurant with a true item, wherein the true item is classified by a common nomenclature; v) assigning, by the processor, a match score for the similarity to each pair of true items; vi) comparing, by the processor, the true items of the first restaurant to the true items of each of the restaurants within the second set of restaurants to produce a set of menu scores for the second set of restaurants; vii) comparing, by the processor, an order history of the first restaurant with an order history of each of the restaurants within the second set of restaurants to produce a set of order history scores for the second set of restaurants, wherein each order history includes a plurality of orders wherein each order in the plurality of orders records at least a cost of the order; viii) computing a set of weighted average scores of the set of menu scores and the set of order history scores; and ix) based on the set of weighted average scores, filtering, by the processor, the second set of restaurants to produce a first set of competitor restaurants.