Were you supposed to be eating healthier in 2016? Have you fallen into the snack wagon? Eating healthy is always high up on the list of the most popular resolutions every year. Goals need details to stick, and OpenStreetMap needs details to grow. Let’s combine the two by adding and enhancing grocery stores in OpenStreetMap. Eating healthy often involves eating more fruit and vegetables. Where do you find those? In the grocery store!
Business listings and other points of interest are slowly gaining momentum in OpenStreetMap. Curious to know how prevalent grocery stores and similar businesses are in OpenStreetmap? Check out this table which includes a dozen cities known for tempting cuisine:
| Grocery Points of Interest* | with Addresses | with Website | with Hours | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auckland | 342 | 6% | 1% | 1% |
| Dublin | 758 | 14% | 4% | 6% |
| Hong Kong | 783 | 5% | 2% | 6% |
| Melbourne | 1,624 | 13% | 43% | 5% |
| Mexico City | 881 | 7% | 1% | 5% |
| Mumbai | 150 | 7% | 1% | 1% |
| San Francisco | 763 | 47% | 17% | 15% |
| São Paulo | 1,046 | 22% | 6% | 3% |
| Seoul | 2,292 | 2% | 0.2% | 1% |
| Singapore | 415 | 11% | 6% | 5% |
| Stockholm | 1,005 | 16% | 14% | 28% |
| Vancouver | 203 | 39% | 10% | 12% |
Seoul leads the pack with the most features where one might find groceries, but lags behind other metros like Melbourne, San Francisco, and Stockholm which include more detailed tags on each store. Lots of opportunities to enhance existing features and add missing ones!
Helpful Tags
If your personal food pyramid is not what you’d like it to be, get inspired by adding or enhancing grocery related businesses in OpenStreetMap! Need some help choosing tags? Here are some suggestions which link to their corresponding OpenStreetMap wiki pages:
- name=*
- addr:housenumber=*
- Types of stores:
- shop=supermarket for large full service grocery stores.
- shop=grocery for traditional groceries stores that are not full service.
- shop=convenience for small local stores.
- shop=greengrocer for stores focused primarily on fruit and vegetables.
- website=*
- opening_hours=*
- Tips (because the opening_hours tag can be confusing)
- Use military time.
- YES: 06:00-22:00
- NO: 6am to 10pm
- Use two letter day indicators: Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
- YES: Mo-Fr
- NO: Mon thru Fri
- Do not add extra spaces between two letter day indicators or time ranges
- YES: Mo-Fr 06:00-22:00
- NO: Mo - Fr 06:00 - 22:00
- Separate more complex hours with a semicolon
- YES: Mo-Fr 06:00-20:00; Sa-Su 08:00-16:00
- NO: any other separator besides a semicolon!
- Additional examples:
- 24/7
- Mo-Fr 06:00-22:00; Sa-Su 08:00-16:00
- Mo-Su 06:00-22:00; Th off
- Looking for a helpful interface to help your format this tag properly? Check out YoHours
- Tips (because the opening_hours tag can be confusing)
Where to Start
Do you shop at the same grocery stores on a regular basis? Enhance those first. Do you pass by a particularly fancy market that you’d like to shop at regular? Save those details in OpenStreetMap for future retrieval. Maybe you just need a kitchen gadget to get you excited to cook again! What is your go-to store for cooking supplies? Explore the OpenStreetMap wiki for the appropriate tags to accompany the new features you would like to add to the map!
Interactive Map
Would it be helpful to see where the current grocery related POIs are in OpenStreetMap? There’s a map for that! Hover over any of the bright blue highlighted grocery points of interest to bring up an info bubble with links to editing tools that can be used to add additional tags. (While you pan and zoom to your neighborhood, note that stores where you might find groceries only show up once you zoom in to level 16.)
This map is interactive! Open full screen ➹
Don’t know Dublin? Search for your city! Is your go-to grocery store missing all together? Shift-click anywhere on the map to open iD or open your favorite OpenStreetMap editor to start mapping!
If you are trying to decide between creating a point or a polygon to represent your grocery store, a point is great when the store is in a building that contains other businesses and/or residences. If your store occupies the entire building, digitize a building polygon if it doesn’t already exist and add your tags to it.
Look for more posts in the New Year’s Resolution series soon!
Getting Started with OpenStreetMap
Need instructions on how to edit with iD? Here are some links to outstanding tutorials from LearnOSM, the OpenStreetMap wiki, and the United States Department of State’s Humanitarian Information Unit:
Are you a mapping wiz and interested in a more advanced editor? Try out JOSM with excellent documentation from Mapbox.
Editing with a Mobile Device
With points of interest, I bet you are interested in a mobile app to edit OpenStreetMap while you are on the go.
iOS users can check out Go Map!! by Bryce Cogswell. This free editor allows you to add features and edit existing features. Check out the Go Map!! wiki page for more details. Pushpin by Fulcrum is another excellent iOS editor for OpenStreetMap points of interest.
Looking for an Android equivalent? Vespucci by Marcus Wolschon is a great option. Check out the Vespucci home page for documentation and tutorials.
Get outside, increase your local knowledge, and share it with the world through your OpenStreetMap edits!
Check out all the posts in the Targeted Editing series:
