Where the Audience Lives: The 2019 Regional Data, in Full

This is the geographic layer of the 2019 audience research, published at full resolution: every US census division's audience pools, and the complete behavioral index table that explains why the biggest population and the best market are not the same place. It is 2019 planning data, kept because we have found no comparable public source — and read today as a worked example, not a live forecast.

The 2019 audience research mapped its audiences by US census division — not by state — and then layered drinking-behavior indices on top. This page carries the whole layer: the map, the division-by-division pools, and the full index table the summary pages only excerpt.

The Map

The 2019 filtered health target, by U.S. census division

Divisions are drawn schematically, not to cartographic boundaries. Shading is the relative size of the 2019 "health target" — adults 21+ across the Food-Allergy/Gluten-Free, Gluten-Sensitive, and Wellness pools, adjusted for overlap. It is not millennial-filtered; the sizing funnel applies that filter later, which is why the funnel's numbers are much smaller than these. The blue outline marks the five divisions the study flagged as best-fit. Alaska and Hawaii belong to the Pacific division by definition; the study's maps drew the contiguous states.

The tension the map exists to show: the biggest pool is not a focus pick. The South Atlantic holds the largest filtered health target (~3.0M) but indexes low on premium-beer and cider behavior; Mountain holds a third of that (~1.0M) and indexes highest in the country on gluten-free need. Size and fit are different questions — the whole argument of Market Sizing Without Lying to Yourself.

Every Division, Every Pool

The audience pools per division, as the study measured them (millions of adults 21+; pools overlap and are not additive):

Census division	Adults 21+	GF / food-allergy	Gluten-sensitive	Wellness	Craft-beer	Health target	Focus
South Atlantic	49M	0.3M	1.1M	2.6M	2.3M	3.0M	(scenario B)
Pacific	39M	0.3M	0.6M	1.7M	2.3M	1.9M	●
Mid-Atlantic	33M	0.2M	0.5M	1.4M	2.1M	1.6M	●
West South Central	29M	0.2M	0.3M	1.2M	1.2M	1.3M
East North Central	36M	0.3M	0.4M	0.9M	1.5M	1.1M
Mountain	18M	0.3M	0.3M	0.9M	0.9M	1.0M	●
West North Central	17M	0.2M	0.2M	0.5M	0.9M	0.6M	●
East South Central	15M	0.08M	0.3M	0.5M	0.5M	0.6M
New England	12M	0.08M	0.09M	0.5M	0.9M	0.5M	●

The Full Index Table

This is the dataset the focus list actually came from, published here in full — the behavioral index of each division (100 = national average; above 100 means the behavior over-indexes there). The summary pages quote the highlights; this is all of it. Bold marks values of 105 and above — our emphasis, applied uniformly:

Index (100 = US avg)	New England	Mid-Atlantic	South Atlantic	E South Central	W South Central	E North Central	W North Central	Mountain	Pacific
Gluten-free / food allergy	84	84	79	68	84	97	135	198	111
Gluten-sensitive	52	94	144	117	68	83	67	106	108
Wellness	98	103	126	80	100	62	74	125	106
Craft-beer enthusiasm	155	126	92	69	83	81	100	93	117
Drinks alcohol	112	110	96	78	90	101	99	87	102
Drinks beer	114	107	96	76	93	100	105	85	102
Drinks super-premium beer	163	122	89	73	78	90	106	91	115
Drinks hard cider	128	118	87	67	75	98	111	114	119
Super-premium or cider	142	118	89	73	80	93	104	101	116

Read down the Mountain column for the sharpest single story in the dataset: the country's highest gluten-free index (198 — nearly double the national average) sitting beside beer drinking slightly below average (85). Dietary need concentrated where beer behavior runs soft — a pool that beer-market data alone would underweight, which is exactly why the study layered health indices over drinking indices instead of reading either one alone.

How the Focus List Was Built

The study's stated logic, reported in full:

1. A progressive population filter — 21+, millennial, in a target segment (adjusted for segment overlap) — to size each division's real pool.
2. Health characteristics of each division's population.
3. Alcohol behavior — especially super-premium beer consumption, the closest proxy for craft-priced gluten-free beer.
4. Soft criteria — lifestyle, health orientation, and the location of the brewing facility.

That produced the five focus divisions — New England, Mid-Atlantic, West North Central, Mountain, Pacific — and the two sizing scenarios on the evidence page, which differ only by whether the fifth slot goes to Mountain or to the South Atlantic's raw size.

How to Read This Page

• Illustrative, not current. 2019 planning data: populations have shifted, and the divisions' indices with them. The value is the method — pools × behavior × fit — and the honest picture of how uneven this market is geographically.
• Divisions, not states. Nothing here ranks any single state.
• Pools overlap. One person can sit in three pools; nothing on this page is additive.
• Reported findings, not a dataset. The figures are reported findings of a commissioned study built on licensed MRI (Mediamark) syndicated consumer data. They are published here as the study's findings, with attribution — there is deliberately no CSV or download, and these third-party-derived figures are excluded from this site's CC BY reuse grant. Cite this page, not a dataset.

Related Reading

• What the 2019 Audience Research Found — the full evidence page this map belongs to
• Market Opportunity — the strategic read
• Regional Opportunity — what to do with regional focus
• Market Sizing Without Lying to Yourself — the sizing discipline

Source and Method Notesexpand to view

All figures transcribed from the Independent Target-Audience Research — MRI Summary (delivered March 12, 2019), census-division map slides and index table. The commissioning details — scoped and approved January 2019, built on MRI (Mediamark Research & Intelligence) syndicated consumer data using MRI's weighted-index method (for each audience segment: the expected number of adults or households, the percentage, and an index against the general population for each measured variable) — come from the signed commissioning scope retained in the Bard's archive, a separate document from the summary itself. The map graphic above is this site's own visualization; division shapes are schematic. The study's own regional slides flagged Pacific, Mountain, West North Central, New England, and Mid-Atlantic as indexing high for super-premium beer consumption, predisposition to drink alcohol, hard-cider drinking, and dietary health needs.