| --- |
| license: cc-by-nc-4.0 |
| language: |
| - en |
| task_categories: |
| - text-classification |
| - table-question-answering |
| - text-retrieval |
| - feature-extraction |
| - text-generation |
| tags: |
| - food |
| - restaurants |
| - menus |
| - commerce |
| - dining |
| - food-tech |
| - business |
| - usa |
| - location-data |
| - structured-data |
| - tabular |
| - api-data |
| size_categories: |
| - 10K<n<100K |
| pretty_name: Souslab — US Restaurant Menus (Sample) |
| configs: |
| - config_name: default |
| data_files: |
| - split: train |
| path: "menu_items_sample.csv" |
| --- |
| |
| # Souslab — US Restaurant Menus |
|
|
| A structured sample of the Souslab US restaurant menu dataset: real restaurants, real menu items, real prices — normalized into a clean schema you can train on or analyze directly. |
|
|
| This sample is published openly under CC-BY-NC-4.0 for research and non-commercial evaluation. The full dataset — **449,000+ US restaurants and 44.3M+ menu items, refreshed continuously with chain-level aggregation** — is available via the [Souslab API](https://souslab.site) under commercial license. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 🚀 Quick start |
|
|
| ```python |
| from datasets import load_dataset |
| |
| ds = load_dataset("AnyStackLabsdev/souslab-us-restaurant-menus") |
| print(ds) |
| print(ds["train"][0]) |
| ``` |
|
|
| Or download directly via [Files and versions](https://huggingface.co/datasets/AnyStackLabsdev/souslab-us-restaurant-menus/tree/main). |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 📊 What's in this sample |
|
|
| - **Restaurants:** ~4,600 US restaurants |
| - **Menu items:** ~10,000 menu items |
| - **Geographic coverage:** All 50 US states + DC |
| - **Chain coverage:** Independents and chain locations, with chain-level grouping |
| - **Snapshot date:** 2026-05-29 |
| - **Format:** CSV |
| - **File size:** ~2.1 MB |
|
|
| This is a **representative sample** — geographically and categorically balanced, but a fraction of the full Souslab corpus. The full dataset is ~4,400x larger. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 🗂️ Schema |
|
|
| ### `menu_items_sample.csv` |
|
|
| | Field | Type | Description | |
| |---|---|---| |
| | `item_uid` | string | Stable unique identifier for this menu item | |
| | `restaurant_id` | string | Foreign key — links to the restaurant | |
| | `menu_name` | string | Name of the menu this item appears on | |
| | `section_name` | string | Menu section or category (e.g. "Appetizers", "Drinks") | |
| | `item_name` | string | Display name of the menu item | |
| | `description` | string \| null | Item description as listed on the menu | |
| | `price` | float \| null | Price in local currency | |
| | `price_text` | string \| null | Raw price string as scraped (e.g. "$12.99") | |
| | `currency` | string | ISO 4217 currency code (e.g. "USD") | |
| | `out_of_stock` | boolean | Whether the item was marked unavailable at time of snapshot | |
| | `city_name` | string | City of the restaurant | |
| | `state_code` | string | US state (2-letter code) | |
| | `zip` | string | Postal code | |
| | `geo_lat` | float | Latitude of the restaurant | |
| | `geo_lng` | float | Longitude of the restaurant | |
| | `canonical_item_id` | string \| null | Souslab canonical item identifier for cross-restaurant deduplication | |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 🧠 Methodology summary |
|
|
| The full methodology lives at [souslab.site/methodology](https://souslab.site/methodology) — covering collection sources, refresh cadence, chain matching, quality controls, and known gaps. Quick version: |
|
|
| - **Sources:** restaurants' own published menus, public aggregator surfaces, and partner data feeds. We don't bypass authentication, scrape behind logins, or ingest user reviews or photos. |
| - **Chain matching:** multi-signal (registry-anchored, name similarity, location/ownership context, menu signature) — same chain across locations resolves to the same `chain_id`. "Joe's Pizza" in NYC and "Joe's Pizza" in Topeka stay distinct unless ownership/menu signals tie them. |
| - **Canonical items:** `canonical_item_id` links the same item appearing across multiple sources or snapshots — useful for deduplication and price tracking over time. |
| - **Refresh cadence (in the live API):** tiered. Top chains daily, mid-tier 2–4× per week, high-traffic independents weekly, long-tail independents monthly. |
| - **Known gaps:** thin coverage of dine-in independents without digital menus, no nutritional data, no promotional pricing modeling, US-only, English-only. |
|
|
| This sample represents a point-in-time snapshot. The live API is refreshed continuously. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 🎯 Use cases |
|
|
| This dataset is designed for: |
|
|
| - **AI/ML training:** fine-tuning LLMs on food/menu language, training cuisine and dietary classifiers, building food-aware vision/multimodal models, grounding RAG over real-world food knowledge |
| - **Market research:** pricing analysis, menu trend tracking, regional cuisine prevalence, chain operational analysis |
| - **Product development:** recommendation engines, menu search and discovery, dietary filtering, food delivery platforms |
| - **Academic research:** food systems analysis, restaurant economics, regional dining patterns |
| - **Alt-data signal generation:** restaurant inflation, regional pricing dynamics, chain operational shifts |
|
|
| For commercial deployment, real-time data, larger volumes, or the full 44M+ menu item universe, [contact us for an API license](https://souslab.site). |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## ⚖️ License |
|
|
| This sample is released under **[CC-BY-NC-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)** — free for research and non-commercial use with attribution. |
|
|
| **Commercial use of this sample, or of any derivative dataset or model trained on it, requires a commercial license from Any Stack Labs.** This includes: |
|
|
| - Production deployment in a commercial product or service |
| - Training models for commercial use (including model-as-a-service) |
| - Reselling, sublicensing, or distributing derivatives |
| - Embedding in commercial datasets or research products |
|
|
| For commercial licensing, contact [hello@souslab.site](mailto:hello@souslab.site) or visit [souslab.site](https://souslab.site). |
|
|
| ### Attribution |
|
|
| When using this sample in research or other CC-BY-NC contexts, please attribute as: |
|
|
| > *"Data sourced from the Souslab US Restaurant Menus dataset by Any Stack Labs (souslab.site)."* |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 📚 Citation |
|
|
| ```bibtex |
| @dataset{souslab_us_restaurant_menus_2026, |
| title = {Souslab US Restaurant Menus (Sample)}, |
| author = {{Any Stack Labs}}, |
| year = {2026}, |
| publisher = {Hugging Face}, |
| url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/AnyStackLabsdev/souslab-us-restaurant-menus}, |
| note = {Sample of the full Souslab dataset; full dataset available via API at souslab.site} |
| } |
| ``` |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 🔗 Related |
|
|
| - **Full dataset & API:** [souslab.site](https://souslab.site) |
| - **API documentation:** [souslab.site/docs](https://souslab.site/docs) |
| - **Methodology:** [souslab.site/methodology](https://souslab.site/methodology) |
| - **Any Stack Labs:** [huggingface.co/AnyStackLabsdev](https://huggingface.co/AnyStackLabsdev) |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 📬 Contact |
|
|
| - **Commercial licensing & API access:** [hello@souslab.site](mailto:hello@souslab.site) |
| - **Questions about this sample:** open a discussion on this dataset page |
| - **Data errors or corrections:** [souslab.site/corrections](https://souslab.site) |
| - **Restaurant takedown requests:** [souslab.site/takedown](https://souslab.site) |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 📝 Changelog |
|
|
| - **v1.0 — 2026-05-29** — Initial public release. ~4,600 restaurants, ~10,000 menu items. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| *Souslab is built by [Any Stack Labs](https://huggingface.co/AnyStackLabsdev).* |
|
|
