TAKEOUT RULED IN 2020, AND IT'S LIKELY TO CONTINUE
The coronavirus pandemic has changed just about everything Americans do, including dining out.
Nationwide dining room closures and warnings to stay home pushed much restaurant business off-premise in 2020. Consumers increasingly began using digital channels to order, and things like online ordering and curbside pickup became expectations rather than amenities.
As the pandemic approaches the one-year mark, new research shows how those dining shifts played out and where they might be going next.
Takeout reigned in 2020.
No surprise here: Consumers spent $769 billion ordering food last year, and 63% of that was for food eaten at home, according to a new report from payment publication PYMNTS and restaurant tech provider Paytronix.
A vast majority of those takeout orders (89%) were placed online, either from a restaurant’s website, mobile app or third-party marketplace. Consumers were cooped up at home, and online ordering made it a lot easier to get food.
Notably, 61% of those online orders were from restaurants that offered only sit-down dining prior to the pandemic. That means a significant portion of restaurants came online in the past year to offer delivery, pickup or other services for the first time.
Takeout usage is increasing, and evolving.
As the pandemic’s grip tightened in April 2020, diners quickly took to drive-thrus, curbside pickup and in-store pickup to order food. That month, more than 50% of consumers increased or maintained their use of drive-thrus and in-store pickup; just under half said the same of curbside, according to a new report from Bluedot, a provider of mobile app geolocation technology.
Fast-forward to this month, and all three channels are pushing 70% usage, the researcher found. Curbside pickup has come the furthest, and usage of both curbside and in-store are now nearly equal with the drive-thru. Overall, consumers are simply using all three channels more.
That behavior comes even as dine-in restrictions loosen nationwide and vaccination efforts inch forward, suggesting that diners’ pandemic-era behavior could stick.