Are you looking for a real-world business case to test your analytics skills?

Need a dashboard project to showcase on your portfolio?

We have just what you need, including another chance to win a free all-access membership to Maven Analytics!

We’ve just added a fresh new data set to the Data Playground containing a year's worth of sales from a fictitious pizza place.

This data set is perfect for setting up a data model and leveraging your data analysis & visualization skills to bring the data underneath to life. So fire up your favorite BI tool (Excel, Power BI, Tableau, Python, etc.) and show us what you've got!

To go along with this release, we’re launching the Maven Pizza Challenge and giving away a free all-access membership to the winner.

We’ll share more about the challenge details below, but first let’s talk about the data…

About the dataset

• This dataset contains 4 tables in CSV format

• The Orders table contains the date & time that all table orders were placed

• The Order Details table contains the different pizzas served with each order in the Orders table, and their quantities

• The Pizzas table contains the size and price for each distinct pizza in the Order Details table, as well as its broader pizza type

• The Pizza Types table contains details on the pizza types in the Pizzas table, including their name as it appears on the menu, the category it falls under, and its list of ingredients

How to play the Maven Pizza Challenge

For the Maven Pizza Challenge, you’ll be playing the role of a BI Consultant hired by Plato's Pizza, a Greek-inspired pizza place in New Jersey. You've been hired to help the restaurant use data to improve operations, and just received the following note:

Welcome aboard, we're glad you're here to help!

Things are going OK here at Plato's, but there's room for improvement. We've been collecting transactional data for the past year, but really haven't been able to put it to good use. Hoping you can analyze the data and put together a report to help us find opportunities to drive more sales and work more efficiently.

Here are some questions that we'd like to be able to answer:

• What days and times do we tend to be busiest?

• How many pizzas are we making during peak periods?

• What are our best and worst selling pizzas?

• What's our average order value?

• How well are we utilizing our seating capacity? (we have 15 tables and 60 seats)

That's all I can think of for now, but if you have any other ideas I'd love to hear them – you're the expert!

Thanks in advance,

Mario Maven (Manager, Plato's Pizza)

For this challenge, your task is to build a single-page dashboard based on Mario's email to help him improve the restaurant's operations.

Here’s how to submit your entry:

1. Share a LinkedIn post mentioning @Maven Analytics and the hashtag #mavenpizzachallenge, with your single-page visual based on the challenge objective above

2. Complete the official challenge submission form to make sure you are entered for a chance to win

Make sure to follow Maven Analytics on LinkedIn for updates on the challenge and invite your connections to play along!

How to win

Finalists will be chosen by the Maven team based on insights, creativity, design, visualizations, and overall storytelling ability. The winner will be selected from the finalist pool by the Maven team, via live voting.

What you can win

As part of the Maven Pizza Challenge, we'll be giving away 1 annual all-access Maven membership completely free of charge. The winner will get access to all of our Excel, Power BI, Tableau, SQL, Python, and Machine Learning courses, all with direct support and coaching from our expert instructors.

No purchase is necessary to participate. As always, this challenge is open to both current Maven subscribers and everyone else.

Check out the official rules below...

Official Terms (Maven Pizza Challenge)

• Maven Analytics will give away 1 Annual subscription for an Individual account. After the one year period, the subscription will expire.

• No purchase is necessary to enter.

• Data Analyst Bootcamp is not included in this prize. That is a separate offering, and not eligible.

• The challenge will close to new entries on Saturday, October 29th, 2022, at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time. All entries must be submitted prior.

• After the submission deadline, finalists will be chosen by the Maven team.

• Maven Analytics will select 1 winner from the finalists, and will announce the winner on Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 at 10:00am Eastern Standard Time. The official announcement will be posted on LinkedIn from the Maven Analytics LinkedIn account.

Don't want to participate in the Maven Pizza Challenge? No problem. You can still analyze the data on your own. All of the Data Playground datasets are completely free and are available for everyone to learn with. Feel free to dig in anytime.

Check out the Pizza Place Sales dataset, and more, at the Data Playground.

Happy analyzing!