[Tagging] Distinction between amenity=restaurant and fast_food

[Johan Jönsson]

Janko Mihelić <janjko at ...> writes:

> 
> 
> 
> 
> If you ask me, all fast foods are restaurants, restaurant is just a 
broader term.There's no way we can find a clear line that distinct fast food 
with slow food restaurants. What ever rule you find, there will be some 
example of a restaurant that fits both descriptions. There is probably a 
restaurant somewhere in the world where you buy food from a counter, but the 
food is expensive and very good. Also, there is a restaurant with waiters, 
that only serves hamburgers. Not to say bars and cafes can also be 
restaurants and fast foods. 
> The best we can do is use other tags, like cuisine=*, diet=*, and maybe 
invent some new ones like waiters=yes/no, buffet=yes/no, 
conveyor_belt_sushi=yes, grill=yes/charcoal/flattop etc.
> Janko
> 
> 
> 
> 2014-08-03 15:19 GMT+02:00 Philip Barnes <phil-
BJ7MCKWqqpBzVKzjlZaNiA at public.gmane.org>:
> 
> On Sat, 2014-08-02 at 21:29 -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote:
> > On Sun, 2014-08-03 at 01:45 +0200, Michał Brzozowski wrote:
> > > Sometimes it's hard for me to tell whether a food venue should be
> > > classified as a restaurant or a fast food.
> > > From the description in the Wiki, the distinguishing features are:
> > > * payment right away
> > > * counter-only service (no waiters)
> > > * disposable plates and utensils
> > > * usually offers take-away
> > > * very fast (I guess this means in most cases you wait at the counter
> > > for your order to be fulfilled)
> > >
<snip>
> > > These usually get tagged as fast_food. Should they be? Sometimes food
> > > venues beg to be called a fast food (and someone tags them so) due to
> > > quality, but then again, they're not so fast - so maybe there should
> > > be amenity=shitty_food? :P Jokes aside, it's all subjective (hence,
> > > fails at verifiability).
> >
<snip>
> >
> > You might try referring to:
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_restaurant
> >
> > which also mentions another classification, "fast casual" which is
> > basically a step up from "fast food" but not quite as fancy as a
> > (casual) full-service restaurant. 


When talking about tagging we could ponder a while on the possibility to use 
a extremly general tag, amenity=place_to_eat_and_drink, this will make the 
initial choice easy. Of course the discussion will be there still for the 
detailing of the subordinate tags, this time with an even wider set of 
meanings (as even vending machines would fit).

The meaning of the term "restaurant" is sometimes a general term for places 
to eat and drink in more ordered forms, as Janko writes (not sure if that's 
the case in british english though). We could use that value (or any like 
it) as the general term and then use a scheme of subtags to tag the 
specifics.

One possibility for this scheme is as Janko writes to use a full set of 
tags, much like a form that you fill in. To make it easier we could have  
one special tag that is used (as a short cut) to fill in these forms with a 
predefined set of values. E.g restaurant=fine_dining, restaurant=fast_food, 
it will be obvious that only some of the tags in the form can be filled this 
way.

So I believe that we need to ask ourselves, how far down in the hierarchy do 
we want to go with the values of the amenity-key in this case. I think that 
as long as there are a fairly known term to use it fits as a value to the 
key amenity=*, as we have pub/cafe/biergarten/bar/food_court. In that 
tradition it is quite clear that Restaurant is one of those terms. 
fast_food_restaurant is quite easy to understand too. I see these values 
only as fast ways to do mapping (and that further detailing could be done 
afterwards).

A problem with the fast tagging method is that we lack a value for the 
unclear cases (a catch-them-all value to use when uncertain ) and then we 
have to decide if something that apparently is neither/both should be tagged 
with one or the other terms.

((My own conclusion of what I wrote is that I will use amenity=restaurant 
when in doubt, even if I don't experience it as a restaurant myself))