Results:
From our data collection, we determined that more than double the number of people go to Sprouts on Fridays than on Mondays and Wednesdays between the hours of 12 and 1pm. This supports our hypothesis that a significantly higher number of people would attend Community Eats than would eat at Sprouts on a normal day.
Analysis:
The result of our study concluded that the people that attend Sprouts between 12 and 1pm more than doubles on Community Eats days when compared with non Community Eats days (Mondays and Wednesdays). A variety of factors may influenced this result and should be analyzed for their extent of influence they had on our results. One factor that may have influenced the large increase in students coming to Sprouts on Community Eats days is the extent of outreach and media to promote this event compared to promotion efforts for Sprouts as a daily lunch spot. More people may also be attracted to Sprouts on Community Eats Fridays because of the communal environment around this event. Another factor may be the difference in food that is served on Community Eats days compared to the food served on regular weekdays. On Community Eats days more food of a greater variety is served, usually including salad, potatoes, a grain, stewed vegetables, bread, and fruit. Whereas the standard lunch menu at Sprouts Mondays through Thursdays consists of soup, bread and baked goods. This is likely an influential factor on students decisions to eat at Sprouts for lunch. However, none of these factors seem influential enough to have caused the drastic difference between students attending Sprouts on Mondays and Wednesdays compared to students who attend Sprouts on Community Eats Fridays. Therefore our group has concluded that the difference in students attending Sprouts on Community Eats days compared to regular lunch days is because Community Eats is a by donation lunch rather than a fixed price.
We did not collect data for very long and we acknowledge that this is the weakness in our project. It would be beneficial to conduct this research for an extended period of time. But we decided that because the amount of people we recorded at Community Eats is so much higher than the other days and because the normal days had relatively similar results, it is not a stretch for us to draw the conclusions that we did from our data.