This is a request to add nested categorical axes. These are often used in "variability charts", examples of which can be seen here.

There's a few ways this could be implemented in practice. Rather than passing an array of values for y the user could pass an object like:

{
  "popcorn": ["gourmet", "gourmet", "plain", ...]
  "batch": ["large", "small", "large", ...]
  ...
}

or simply pass a category name / number (1 or "gourmet-large-little") and pass the nesting information for the axis in the layout section.

(I was surprised not to find an open issue for this -- it's possible that there is one but I didn't search using the right terms).

Edit: There is some limited support for this as shown here but it involves hacking the axis together by hand and would be difficult to use in an automated manner.