The 15 Most Popular Places to Eat in New Bedford

Whenever I head off to a new place on vacation, I have a rule of thumb: I always try to eat at places that are crowded.

While it can be inconvenient to wait in line, people tend to only be willing to wait for quality.

It made me wonder, which places in New Bedford have the heaviest foot traffic?

A New Tool to Measure Foot Traffic

As AI continues to grow, Fun 107 now has a new tool at its disposal. It is called Placer.ai, and it uses location intelligence to show businesses and city planners how many people visit a place (like a mall, park, or store), who those people are, and where they came from. Placer.ai can tell you if a location is busy, when it is busy, and whether visitors are staying for a while or just stopping in.

How Does Placer.ai Work

How does Placer.ai do it? To put it bluntly, it tracks people through their cell phones. The technology uses location data embedded in mobile apps. For what it is worth, Placer.ai says it prioritizes privacy by removing personal identifiers such as names and phone numbers. So while data might show a 48-year-old New Bedford man, no personal identity is revealed.  If you are a business owner, and would like free information about the foot traffic to your business, contact Mark Stachowski at Fun107.com.

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What This Data Reveals About Local Food Spots

One of the first things I did when we got access to Placer.ai was ask it to generate a list of the most popular places to eat on the SouthCoast. To be clear, the measurement was not based on food quality or value, but on the number of people who visited these locations over the past year.

Remember, these businesses are being ranked strictly by foot traffic over the past 12 months, so it would make sense that places that generate a lot of "to-go" business would have an advantage.

Here are the results.