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💡 School Food Price Explorer Guide

This explorer shows contract prices for school year 2025/2026 for the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim market.

How products are matched

Products are identified by manufacturer item code (100% match) or by text similarity in description, brand, and product characteristics (≥75% match quality). Only matched products are included in the analysis.

What is “% price difference”?

For each product we compute the price range across school districts in the market:

% price difference = (max price − min price) / min price × 100

Per-pound prices are used when available; otherwise total pack prices.

How to read the box plots

Products are grouped by food group and food subgroup. The box plot summarizes the distribution of price differences for all products in a group. For example, a median of 11% means that for 50% of products in the group, prices vary by at least 11% between school districts. The box shows where the middle 50% of products fall; whiskers show the typical range; dots are outliers with unusually large variation.

Interacting with the page

Use the filters at the top to drill down by food group, subgroup, match quality, or search for specific products. Click on a food group in the box plot to filter the entire page. Click any bar or scatter point to see product details.

You can re-open this guide any time by clicking the 💡 button in the header.

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