Getting The Most of The Pie

There have been rumbles of discontent in the Precinct. I've heard angry whispers. Tears have been shed. The story I've heard is that particular businesses have been receiving favourable treatment.

When I hear stories like this, it is not my habit to swallow them whole. I like to check the facts, see if there is any substance.

So I did a quick survey of the GRBA's "Goodwood Road" Facebook page http://facebook.com/GoodwoodAlive/ to see if anyone was getting more than their fair share of promotion. The GRBA's Co-ordinator posts on the page several times a week. To get an idea whether certain businesses were in fact getting disproportionate exposure, I looked at 40 consecutive posts. 

 34 businesses were mentioned. There are around 80 businesses in the Precinct: 21 were mentioned only once, 13 were mentioned more than once, while around 46 were not mentioned at all. Of those mentioned more than once, 8 were mentioned twice, while a lucky handful were mentioned multiple times. These were: The Capri Theatre (6 mentions), Two Sisters Food and Wine Bar (5 mentions), The Boulangerie (4 mentions), Trouble and Strife (4 mentions) and The Community Centre (not a business) (4 mentions).

Let's call these fortunate establishments the Top Five. They got 38% of the 60 business mentions. Not exactly even-handed.

"Others" includes 29 businesses mentioned either once or twice. So 15% of the businesses got 38% of the mentions.

It gets even more disproportionate when you look at how often the Top Five were the sole subject of a post. (Some posts mention more than one business, others feature one business only. These figures are about the latter.) The Boulangerie (3 sole mentions), The Capri Theatre (4 sole mentions), Two Sisters Food and Wine Bar, (1 sole mention), Trouble and Strife (2 sole mentions).

Of the posts mentioning one business only, 45% were of the Top Five, amply supporting the rumours of favourable treatment.

There were 22 sole mentions: 10 of these were about the Top 5.

Other biases in evidence: 57% of mentions were cafes/restaurants/eateries and regrettably you were far more likely to get a mention if you were of white anglo extraction rather than Asian. Only one Asian eatery got a sole mention. An astonishing nine were lumped together in one post. 

I was sad to discover that, in this sample at least, people's suspicions were true. The businesses they suspected of getting favourable treatment are indeed getting it. I'm not saying it's intentional. It may be quite unintentional. But it's happening. And it isn't fair.