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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Data Insights

Gallup: Curbside Pickup and Restaurant Takeout Show Double Digit Growth During Pandemic

A new survey from Gallup released today shows that more Americans have adopted low-contact methods of getting their food since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The survey found that 44 percent of U.S. adults picked up takeout from a restaurant in May (up from 26 percent at the end of March), and 36 percent used curbside pickup from a store (up from 19 percent in March).

While your first reaction to this news might be “Duh, we were on lockdown,” you’re not wrong. I mean, restaurants across the country had to close their dine-in service, so the only options were takeout and delivery. The Gallup survey is worth pointing out because data is better than anecdotes, and this study adds to a growing body of market research around our pandemic behaviors.

And sure, stats on increased restaurant takeout might not be too surprising, and the growth for curbside pickup is and will something to keep an eye on. Almost double the number of people are doing curbside pickup now since the beginning of the pandemic. And while Gallup’s poll only breaks out curbside pickup “at a store,” and not specifically a grocery store, the survey’s findings are in-line with other recent research on the growth of online grocery shopping.

A Brick Meets Click survey from earlier this month reported that online grocery sales hit $5.3 billion in April, with 40 million people shopping for groceries online. A Coresight survey also from this month predicted that online grocery shopping will grow by 40 percent this year to hit $30 billion in food and beverage sales.

While takeout and pickup have seen big increases over the past couple of months, delivery hasn’t seen a similar spike. According to that same Gallup survey, 23 percent of respondents had food or pizza delivered from a restaurant in May (up from 13 percent in March), and 14 percent had groceries delivered (up from 11 percent in March).

The bigger question looming over all of this data, of course, is how many of these behaviors will become permanent. As states around the country start to relax their shelter in place orders, we’ll have to see if people revert to the pre-pandemic patterns or have adopted totally new ones.

Survey: Spurred by COVID-19, Online Grocery to Grow by 40 Percent in 2020, Hit $38B in Sales

It seems obvious that mandated sheltering in place because of a global pandemic has been a big driver of online grocery sales. But thanks to a new survey from Coresight Research, we now have some numbers to back that obvious assertion up, and show how big grocery e-commerce is getting.

In its US Online Grocery Survey 2020 (subscription required), Coresight predicted that the online grocery sector will grow by roughly 40 percent this year. The report states “That would equate to almost $38 billion of online food and beverage sales in 2020, or around 3.5% of the total market.” That’s up from 2.6 percent in 2019.

As you can probably guess, the coronavirus has spurred this surge in e-commerce. Coresight’s survey found that 49 percent of respondents said they started buying or were buying more groceries online because of the outbreak. It should be noted that this survey was conducted in mid-March, relatively early on in the mandated shelter in place orders. Those numbers may have actually gone up in April as the virus continued to spread.

In addition to more people buying groceries online, people are buying more types of items (produce, meat, alcohol) online. Coresight found that people are buying across an average of five different grocery categories online, up from 4.4 categories last year. Coresight says this indicates people aren’t just buying one-offs, but doing full-basket shopping online.

And finally, it looks as though demand for online commerce could remain strong over the next year. Coresight found that while 52 percent of respondents said that they had bought online groceries in the past 12 months, 62.5 percent expect to do so in the next twelve months.

Coresight’s numbers add to a growing body of market research that illustrate just how online grocery shopping has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this month, Brick Meets Click reported that grocery e-commerce sales hit $5.3 billion in April. NPD Group found that third-party grocery delivery sales jumped nearly 300 percent in April alone. And last month, a C+R Research study found that 60 percent of US shoppers were “fearful” of physically going into the grocery store.

Grocery stores have been considered essential since the start of this pandemic, so they have remained open the entire time (thank you, grocery store workers!). But even though some states are relaxing their stay at home restrictions, grocery stores are implementing new measures to help curb the spread of the virus. Going forward, grocery shopping isn’t going to be what it was just a few months ago. Plexiglass shields at checkout, fewer people in the stores, masks worn by employees and customers. The in-store experience may just make shopping at home online more attractive.

Here’s How People Are Using Their Instant Pots During Quarantine

By now we’ve all read about how people have changed their eating and cooking habits during the quarantine. But how exactly are they using their Instant Pots, arguably the runaway countertop cooking success story of the last few years, and the first cooking gadget many millennials ever purchased on their own?

To find out, I decided to check in with the maker of the Instant Pot appliance and they shared some data on exactly how people are using their multicookers ever since the pandemic forced the entire world to stay home and start cooking.

One of the big things that changed is the cyclicality of the normal cooking week. In a typical non-pandemic week, Sunday is the biggest day for Instant Pot by a substantial margin, with 25% off all cooking activity occurring on the day of rest.

During quarantine, cooking days have become more evenly distributed as people are home pretty much all the time and Sunday only accounts for 17% of cooking activity. Conversely, Friday, which normally represents the weekly cooking activity nadir, has jumped from 9% of all cooking activity to 13% during the quarantine.

Apparently you can make bread with your Instant Pot (who knew?), and just like with pretty much every other cooking device, the multifunction cooker has seen a sharp increase in loavemaking. The chart above shows how total searches for bread recipes jumped 700% right as the US went into social distancing in early March. Interestingly, this increase is almost identical to the 800% jump in breadmaker sales that happened at the same time.

The search for comfort has also been well-documented. That embrace of more carb-centric food has meant a significant drop in vegan and vegetarian diets, where searches dropped 82% by the week after social distancing had been announced.

And it wasn’t just plant-forward diets that took a hit during coronavirus, as Keto-centric recipes saw a 70% drop in the searches in the same time period.

The big question is will all of these forced changes brought on by the jarring impact of a forced quarantine stick around? My guess is some of the behavior change will have some staying power beyond summer as consumers adjust to lower overall incomes and continue to cook at home more as they head back to work (even at reduced or moderated schedules), but that we will see (and already are seeing) some partial snap-backs to behaviors and routines that were in place before the quarantine.

Online Grocery Sales Hit $5.3 Billion in April, Up 37 Percent from March

April was a record-setting month for U.S. online grocery sales, which reached $5.3 billion, according to new research released by Brick Meets Click and Symphony RetailAI earlier this week (tip of the hat to Grocery Dive). This represents a 37 percent growth over March, which was its own record month with $4.0 billion in sales.

The Brick Meet Click survey found that over the last 30 days, 40 million people shopped for groceries online (up from 39.5 million in March), with the total number of orders hitting 62.5 million in April (up from 46.9 million in March), and a slight increase in spending per order at $85 in April (up from $82 in March). Consider, for comparison, that a Gallup survey in August of last year showed that only 11 percent of respondents shopped for groceries online once a month.

All of this record-setting action, of course, is driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in-place orders enacted across the country starting in March. This isolation and social distancing spurred droves of people online to shop for groceries to be either picked up curbside or delivered.

Among the motivating factors for grocery e-commerce was fear. Brick Meets Click found that 47 percent of households surveyed had a “high level” of concerns about catching the novel coronavirus. This echoes a recent survey from C+R Research that found 60 percent of respondents were “fearful” of actually shopping at the grocery store.

These record months of online grocery shopping have put a tremendous strain on the grocer retail infrastructure. Amazon, Walmart, Kroger Instacart and others have all ramped up hiring and added additional measures to try and keep up with the sudden uptick in demand.

But despite two record months in a row, there are bigger, more existential troubling signs on the horizon. In addition to all the boomtown data Brick Meets Click found, its survey also gave us a sobering glimpse at the economic hardship data that lags behind the big sales numbers: 39 percent of surveyed households indicated that their monthly income has dropped 25 percent or more since January and February of this year. Less household money, sadly, means less spent at the grocery store.

Though grocery stores have remained opened during this pandemic, some states are starting to ease their shelter-in-place restrictions. We look forward to seeing Brick Meets Click’s May scorecard to see if and how online grocery shopping behavior has changed.

Survey: 60 Percent of US Shoppers “Fearful” of Shopping Inside Grocery Stores

If coronavirus has you a little nervous about buying your food at the actual supermarket, you’re not alone. Results of a new survey from C+R Research shows that 60 percent of American shoppers are “now fearful” to shop at grocery stores, with 73 percent saying they are shopping less at physical stores.

Not surprisingly, C+R’s survey also found that grocery delivery has shot up 3.5x during the pandemic. Whereas consumers used to take an average of 2.3 weekly trips to the grocery store before the COVID-19 outbreak, they now average 1 trip a week.

While we’ve seen previous studies on the surge in online shopping, C+R’s survey highlights the emotional reactions people are having. In addition to being fearful of grocery stores, C+R found that 60 percent of respondents feel a sense of panic or anxiety when shopping, and 45 percent disinfect groceries when they get home.

This is actually completely understandable. Whereas grocery shopping used to be somewhere between fun and banal, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed all that. Aside from forced sheltering in place limiting our non-essential movements, the coronavirus grocery store is a far cry from what is was just a few months ago. Salad and hot bars are removed, workers and shoppers wear masks and gloves and there are plexiglass shields up around cashiers. This dystopian aesthetic, combined with a legitimate fear of catching a deadly virus, should cause a certain amount of fear.

The C+R survey reached 2,012 consumers from March 27 to March 28, 2020 via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. As the pandemic continued domestically throughout the month of April, the question now is how deeply embedded have these fears become and will there be a new normal for grocery shopping? The virus may recede, but how long will its effects last on the way we interact with other people in public? If fear of supermarkets is making online grocery shopping the new normal, perhaps more grocery stores should go dark and just act as fulfillment centers for e-commerce.

People will always need to shop for food, so I’d be curious to see C+R follow up this study on a regular basis to check-in on how people continue to cope with the ever-changing world.

As It Turns Out, Italians Are Making Lots More Bread (and Pasta) Too During Quarantine

Here in the States, there’s been lots of talk about how we’ve become a nation of bread bakers with the arrival of quarantine life.

As it turns out, bread baking is an international phenomenon. In a recent Medium post by the CookPad team, they analyze recipe usage data from their Italy team to show how interest in bread making has spiked in the Bel Paese an order of magnitude higher than before the pandemic.

According to the data, interest in the recipe for “pane di grano duro” (which translates to ‘durum wheat bread’ in English) jumped 12-fold, garnering more views during the lockdown than the entire top 10 recipe list did pre-lockdown.

Image Credit: CookPad

And also much like the States, Italians are also seeking comfort through food. Views for ice cream, torta, and fried rice balls were way up. And this being Italy, it should be of no surprise that pasta-making saw a huge increase: Fettuccine saw over a 700% jump in interest in during quarantine.

Italians are also sharing what they are making online too. According to Cookpad, “cooksnaps” (where cooks take photos of their creations) have jumped 3-fold in the app.

I guess it shouldn’t be any surprise that Italians (and Brits, Canadians and pretty much everyone else) are baking more bread and cooking more in general. The big question is what all this forced-home cooking will do to behavior in the long term and what it means for different participants in the food and cooking ecosystem. It will be a couple of years before we can gauge the staying power of new habits learned during this time, but my guess is all of this quarantine cooking is, at the very least, giving some of us skills that can better equip for life.

Done Rising? Some Signs Indicate Quarantine-Induced Bread Baking May Have Already Peaked

For most of March, bread baking was having its moment.

Quarantined would-be bakers flooded Instagram and Facebook with photos of freshly baked loaves. Google searches jumped for break-making how-to’s. Flour and yeast disappeared from store shelves.

But now, it seems the bread may be done rising.

According to data from shoppable recipe platform Chicory, searches for the recipe for basic home made bread reached a peak the week of March 22nd at 896 thousand total views. A week later, views dropped by 26% to 661 thousand.

Are consumers over breadmaking?

I doubt it. My guess is that more consumers than ever before are baking bread.

So why the drop? One reason may be consumers realized there’s plenty of bread to be found on store shelves after an initial wave of panic buying and are mixing store purchases with home baking. Another may be that after the initial wave of searches for that first bread recipe crested, many have moved on to making more loaves with the same recipe or using one road-tested by a friend.

And then, some, like our own Catherine Lamb, may have just realized bread baking takes a lot of time. I knew she had recently taken up baking bread, so I asked her how it’s been going.

“I still do bake it, but less frequently” she responded. “It just takes a lot of time (basically 24 full hours) with intermittent maintenance, so it’s not a spur of the moment thing.

“Plus,” she said, “I had SO MUCH bread.”

I figured if Catherine, The Spoon’s most prolific home cook and a person who’s Twitter profile pic has her holding an artisanal loaf, has lost patience with act of bread baking, I can only imagine how many “one and done” bakers are out there.

Finally, it’s possible the downward trend may only be temporary. After a slight dip in early April, Google Trends showed Google searches for the term bake bread rebounded this week.

I also have to wonder if many of the first time home bread bakers are moving onto new projects (including new types of bread). While basic bread and tortillas dipped this past week, views of “how to make banana bread” and “how to make your own sourdough starter” have continued to grow every week for the last month.

One thing that is clear is consumer behavior has changed radically over the past month. Certainly, many more people are baking bread now than at the beginning of the year, even if some of those may have already decided to go back to buying loaves at the store.

The real question I have is how permanent many of the behavior shifts will be after a couple months of quarantine. My guess is it will probably take at least a year or two to find out.

Comfort Food & Scratch Cooking: What the Data Tells Us About COVID-19’s Impact on Home Cooking Habits

While it’s hard to see the bright side of things during the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic, one potential silver lining is the fact most consumers are cooking more at home. Research has shown that home cooking not only often can lead to healthier overall lifestyles, but it’s also a good life skill to teach kids.

And whether you’re taking a casual tour of social media or looking at data from any number of sources, signs today definitely point to more of us making our own food. A lot more of us.

But what specifically do the numbers say? First, that a lot of people are learning to make certain types of food for the first time.

Whether it’s something as simple as making rice…

Or something a little more complicated like making bread, interest has spiked to all time highs.

But it’s not just Google searches that are shifting, but actual purchase data of cooking equipment. According to NPD analyst Joe Derochowski, demand for gear to make food at home has jumped significantly.

According to tracking data from NPD for the week ending March 21st, purchases of bread makers were up 800% when compared to the same week a year ago. Electric rotisseries were up nearly 4 times the previous year, while pasta makers were pacing at 3 times their normal sales when compared to a year ago.

While people are learning the basics and scooping up housewares to help them prepare more food at home, they’re also looking for recipes that lets them pinch a penny or two. Chicory, a shoppable recipe app platform used by recipe publishers, has seen a spike in interest for low-cost “bowl food” like soups and stroganoff.

The table below shows a snapshot in time look at the top daily recipe views near the end of March:

What the table data tells us is that people are making comfort food that can stretch a buck, which is not all that surprising since many of us have been thrust into financial uncertainty in relatively short order.

While there are many differences between the great recession and today’s crisis, it is instructive to look at what happened then to get an idea of how behaviors changed during the downturn. Data from NPD shows those categories that saw an increase between February 2007 (pre-crisis) and February 2010 (post-crisis) were pasta dishes, bread and cereal.

In other words, not only did we look to make food that was affordable such as pasta and casseroles then, but we also consumed more carbs, which tend to be cheaper than protein-heavy foods.

And while we are once again cooking more food that will feed us more affordably, unlike the 2008 and 2009 time frame, early indicators show that recent behavior shifts might be driven in part by a desire for food self-sufficiency rather than just saving a buck. Data from Chicory shows in the chart below there’s was a massive spike in mid-March in interest in scratch cooking.

Naturally, part of the interest in making things like corn bread and cookies is due to most of us having more time on our hands, but I also have to wonder if the rapid growth in interest in things like making things like tortillas and basic bread is because some consumers worry they might have to make these staples at home for the foreseeable future.

How permanent these behavior shifts will be depend in large part on how the COVID-19 crisis resolves itself over the course of 2020-2021. My guess is the lingering effects of the Coronavirus crisis will be longer and deeper than that of the great recession and, ultimately, result in more permanent behavior changes than we saw from the last big downturn.

According to Yelp and Foursquare Data, Pizza, Fast Food, and CSAs are Up in Wake of Coronavirus

There’s a lot of news swirling around there about how COVID-19 is hurting local businesses, and for restaurants, things are looking especially grim. But what does the data actually say? Yelp and Foursquare recently released some analysis of internal data that gives insight into how our relationship with restaurants, dining, and more is shifting dramatically during this very abnormal time.

Yelp notes that many of the changes in restaurant and food business are a direct result of “the home’s rising status as the place to eat.” Considering we’re supposed to be social distancing — and a growing number of restaurants are forced to close their doors to diners, anyway — that’s not exactly surprising.

The numbers are pretty bleak for restaurants. Yelp reports that U.S. consumer interest in restaurants has fallen by about 54 percent. They only looked at data from the data range of March 8 to 18, so the number has probably increased as more and more cities and states restrict dine-in capabilities for restaurants. Simultaneously, Yelp notes that delivery and take-out are “2X more popular than usual.”

What sort of food is popular during the corona-pocalypse? Basically, anything that is suited for delivery and pickup. That means dim sum restaurants, French restaurants, and other spots geared towards more leisurely meals eaten in the restaurant dining room are suffering. Sales from food trucks and breweries are also down.

The news isn’t bad for all restaurants, though — some are actually thriving in the new normal of COVID-19. Sales from pizzerias and fast food restaurants are up 44 percent and 64 percent, respectively. Unsurprisingly, Yelp says that sales of beer, wine, and spirits are up 63 percent. And in your daily dose of heart-warming news, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), or deliveries of farm produce, are up a whopping 405 percent.

Foursquare released its own data examining the change in foodservice foot traffic from February 19 to March 13. Like Yelp, it showed that QSRs are actually experiencing an uptick in traffic, though it cited a much smaller rise of 11 percent. Foursquare noted that QSR visits are down in areas with higher infection rates, like Washington state, but up in areas of the country with lower alert levels.

Seems like people still love their chicken sandwiches. [Photo: Foursquare]

Yelp points out that these shifts haven’t affected all of the U.S. in the same way. The impact is most significant near the coasts and more muted in the Midwest and Southeast, despite the fact that many cities and states have mandated dine-in closures in those areas. However, Yelp notes that every state reflects, at least to some degree, “the new reality of the coronavirus economy — that is, until it changes quickly again.”

To help restaurants struggling with this new reality, Yelp announced today that it would contribute $25 million to support local restaurants in the form of waived advertising fees and even free advertising.

That’s nice and all, but all the advertising in the world might not be enough to keep restaurants afloat. Some spots don’t have enough saved to keep paying rent/staff with significant diminished income. Others aren’t able to effectively pivot to a delivery- or pickup-only menu.

I don’t want to end this post on a glum note, but faced with cold, hard numbers, it can be hard not to feel scared for the future of local restaurants. So do what you can to support — go buy a gift card, tip a bartender virtually, or just place a pick-up order to support your favorite neighborhood spot. Maybe together we can help change some of these numbers.

As Online Grocery Shopping Surges, Walmart Leads the Retail Pack (and Could Stay There)

With COVID-19 limiting movement in some cities and raising new concerns about being out in public among groups of people, there’s been a surge in online grocery shopping. And according to a piece in Bloomberg yesterday, Walmart was the top destination for online grocery shopping, which could translate into being the long-term leader in the space.

Bloomberg writes:

As online grocery shopping goes mainstream, Walmart will be the main beneficiary. One-third of shoppers surveyed by Gordon Haskett Research Advisors on March 13 said they bought food online over the past week, and of those, 41% were doing so for the first time. For those newbies, Walmart was by far the most popular option, capturing more than half of orders. Amazon and its Whole Foods chain garnered only 14%.

Now we don’t know how big the sample size of this survey was, but the results seem in-line with what we would expect. Walmart is a massive retail operation with a broad distribution of physical stores, so it makes sense it would be a big beneficiary of our current situation.

Prior to the global pandemic, Walmart and Amazon had been locked in a heated battle for supremacy in the online grocery space. The two retail giants exchanged tit-for-tat moves over the past year: Walmart launched and rolled out Delivery Unlimited for groceries nationwide, Amazon waived delivery fees for its Prime members, Walmart started testing its own Amazon Prime-like membership service, and Amazon started building its own physical grocery store locations.

Walmart already having physical locations definitely gives it an advantage in this time of social distancing. Walmart stores are there for people brave enough to actually go out and shop in person. The stores also act as a distributed network for home deliveries, or can provide pickup locations for online orders.

I myself am putting this last scenario to the test. I live in a more rural area and while delivery from my local Safeway couldn’t be fulfilled for more than a week and a half at the time of ordering, I can do an at-store pickup from Walmart tomorrow. Aside from a couple of minor hiccups, the Walmart app and online experience was pretty easy. Most everything I wanted was in stock, and if it wasn’t, they made it easy to swap.

As more people are forced into online grocery shopping for the first time they will go to where they can get the food and supplies they need in a timely manner. With Amazon struggling to keep up with delivery demand, Walmart, with its network of stores could become people’s de facto preference. And once they have an account set up with Walmart, re-stocking pantries will be that much easier as this lockdown continues and into a time in the hopefully not too distant future when we can emerge from our homes.

New York City’s Restaurant Traffic is Down by Almost 70%. That’s Before the Lockdown

This weekend I wrote about how restaurant traffic had seen precipitous drops last week in places like Washington State and New York City due to coronavirus. That trend has only gotten worse.

As of Sunday, restaurant traffic drops in big US cities hit hard by COVID-19 were eye-popping. Using OpenTable data, I charted the year over year traffic from about a month ago (Feb 18th, the first available date using OpenTable’s data) and compared it to year over year traffic on Sunday.

New York City’s restaurant traffic was down by 69%, while Seattle’s restaurant traffic had dropped by 62%. Despite being two of the earliest hotspots, these were not the biggest drops. San Francisco restaurant traffic was down by 72% on Sunday compared to a year earlier, while Boston’s traffic was down 70%.

It should all be noted that this has all happened before the start of mandatory restaurant dine-in shutdowns, which are beginning this week in New York City, Seattle and San Francisco. Clearly, these numbers are going to get worse.

It’s also worth noting that in cities where there are shutdowns, delivery is still allowed and those restaurants that can make the pivot to all-delivery models are attempting to do so. Even Canlis, Seattle’s legendary $300 a plate restaurant, has closed its dining room and opened up a burger-pick-up drive through lane.

Still, businesses that were built to feed diners inside a space cannot pivot on a dime and we’re seeing significant disruption to even the biggest names in dining. Danny Meyer announced the temporary shut downs of his restaurants, following the likes of Tom Douglas in Seattle. José Andrés, being the great José Andrés, has shut down his restaurants and turned them into community kitchens to feedd COVID-impacted families.

We’ll continue to cover the impact of coronavirus as we move into forced closings. For those restaurants looking to ramp up their delivery business, we’ve started to gather a list of companies lending a helping hand here.

This One Graph Shows How Bad Things Are For Restaurants Because of Coronavirus

If pictures tell a story, the one below is not a pretty one for restaurants:

The chart, which I created using data from OpenTable, shows the percentage difference year over year on each day for diners from February 18th all the way through yesterday, March 13th. OpenTable has data available for each state (you can check your own state here), but for this chart I included those areas most impacted by Coronavirus as well as Florida, which seems to be emerging as a hotspot. I’ve also included the data for the total of the United States.

What does it show? That restaurant traffic went from what looked like decent growth in places like Washington state just a month ago to simply dropping off a cliff. Data for yesterday, March 13th, showed Washington state restaurant traffic was down by 53%. New York, also grappling with an outbreak, traffic was down 54%.

While traffic hadn’t dropped to the same extent in California or Florida, it’s trending that way, and the United States as a whole has seen traffic drop by 36%.

What’s struck me is the velocity of the decline. Last week total US traffic at restaurants was down 8% compared to the previous year. Just a week later, the drop was over four times that.

Looking beyond the US, the picture doesn’t get any better. Below is a chart showing how coronavirus is hitting countries like Mexico, Germany and Ireland.

Interestingly, Ireland’s restaurant industry saw the biggest overall drop this past week, with its restaurant traffic down by 54% as of yesterday, compared with just 13% a week prior.

COVID-19’s impact on the restaurant industry is expected to only get worse in coming days. We’ve seen some of the industry’s biggest and most successful names already grappling with this change and having to furlough or lay people off. Because of this, we’re looking to highlight some of those companies stepping up to help. If your company is offering resources or discounts to help restaurants impacted by coronavirus, drop us a line at tips@thespoon.tech.

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