Midwest a fertile ground for pizza joints and bars

Pizza and beer go together? Stop the presses! A recent study from Infogroup Targeting Solutions, a database marketing and analytics company, found cities with the most pizza joints per capita tend to also have the most bars. That’s not shocking, but you’d be surprised to see which cities make those lists.

Orlando, with 10.3 pizza restaurants per 10,000 residents, is the top pizza city, followed by Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Buffalo. Yes, you read that right. Pizza hotbeds like New York and Chicago did not rank in the top 10. We’d guess the rankings favor less densely populated locations, plus the list makes no mention of quality, just quantity.

Pittsburgh, with 11.8 bars per 10,000 people, has the most bars, followed by St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. Orlando was sixth and Buffalo 10th, evidence of the pizza-bar connection. We can only theorize that those in the Rust Belt have plenty of reasons to drink, and visit bars, between the dismal weather and shaky economy. And as Clevelanders, our sports teams give us more reason to belly up to any of the 11.5 bars per 10,000 people here. Orlando, you ask? Ever been there for a convention, or to Disney with your kids? Bartender, get me another.

Just for fun, we cross-checked all of the above-mentioned cities and none happened to rank on this list of the top 25 happiest and healthiest cities in the U.S. Just sayin’.

Orlando was the top restaurant city in the country with 99.3 restaurants per 10,000 residents (although think about the visitors coming year round for work and pleasure), followed by Atlanta and Miami. Atlanta has the most barbecue joints, while Orlando has the most seafood and burger restaurants.

This info might come in handy if you are looking to open a new restaurant, but would you consider a city with a high concentration of a specific style as reason to expand there, or reason to look elsewhere? We’ll leave that to you.