Data cleaning · Durham, NC
Durham data cleaning for restaurants, bars and makers
Downtown Durham has nearly 150 restaurants and bars, a Saturday farmers market and a long list of former tobacco sites turned storefronts. Each of those keeps lists, and the lists drift. We pull them back into line.
Durham cleaning for menus, tabs and bar tickets
A kitchen export lists the same dish as Brisket Plate, brisket plate and Brisket Plt. A bar tab lists a regular as Dana R., Dana Reyes and Dana Reyes followed by an invisible space. Ask which dish sells best, and the answer splits three ways.
We read each column, report the spellings and repeats we find, and ask you which one wins. A script rewrites the whole export under your rule. The ranking you read afterward is a ranking of dishes, not of typos.
Venue names around American Tobacco and Brightleaf
The American Tobacco Historic District and Brightleaf Square are former tobacco sites that were redeveloped. Downtown Durham, Inc. names American Tobacco Campus, CCB Plaza, Main Street, DPAC, the Carolina Theatre and Durham Bulls Athletic Park as downtown anchors.
If you sell tickets, cater, or run pop-ups near those places, your sheet probably holds a dozen forms of each. DPAC, D.P.A.C. and the Performing Arts Center are one venue. We group them by your choice and show you the full list we grouped.
Saturday market sheets, cleaned for the season
The Durham Farmers' Market meets at 501 Foster Street on Saturday mornings all year, and sells only items made by the people selling them within 70 miles. A seller at that market records products, buyers and farm or kitchen of origin. Each of those columns picks up spelling drift across a year of Saturdays.
Text prices cause a different problem: they sit in a column that looks numeric and refuses to add. We convert them and show the changed cells.
Cleaning before you ask a counselor or lender
The Durham Tech Small Business Center offers free one-on-one counseling and free workshops from its Durham County office at 701 W. Main St. The Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce, established in 1906, offers networking, a member directory and small business resources. In any of those conversations the question of what your numbers say comes early. A sheet with one row per customer answers it faster.
Questions from Durham owners
Our point-of-sale export has hundreds of menu items. Is that too many to fix?
A script handles long lists as easily as short ones. We start by listing every variant, then you tell us which names belong together. The tedious part is your decision, not our typing.
Can you tell which customers are the same person across bar and event tickets?
We can match rows by a rule you approve, such as the same email after spaces and capitals are removed. Every pair we would merge appears in a list first, so you can strike the ones you doubt.
What does Durham's market rule about 70 miles have to do with cleaning?
A column recording where items came from tends to hold town names, farm names and abbreviations side by side. If you report on it, the entries need one spelling each. We handle that with the same method as any other label.
Sources for the facts on this page: Durham, North Carolina, Wikipedia · Downtown Durham, Inc. · Durham Farmers' Market · Small Business Center, Durham Technical Community College
Send us the Durham export that counts one dish three times
Pick a free 15 or 30 minute call on the contact page. Tell us what the sheet is supposed to answer.