A little less than two decades ago, the delivery of restaurant-quality meals was still largely limited to. While grocery deliveries had the lowest number of users and deliveries before COVID, among other types, they increased at the highest rate during COVID. If a fast food company didn’t deliver food from a restaurant quickly enough, the restaurant turned to another company that did, which meant that the delivery itself became more efficient. Regarding the total number of users and deliveries over time, the long-term effects of COVID on delivery services are expected to be approximately half of the short-term effects.
One possible reason for the adoption of deliveries is that they may have limited secure channels for purchasing other than deliveries. In addition, an older person (over 65 years of age) in the household was associated with an increase in the initial adoption of home food delivery. Grocery deliveries had the highest proportion of new adopters, including new temporary and permanent adopters, with 21.8%, followed by household items, with 20.3%, food, with 8.1%, and other packages, with only 3.3%. Courier networks also offer on-time or same-day delivery as a rule.
If transportation planners and researchers were to rely solely on the current popularity of delivery services without taking into account (a) a substantial number of people who will not continue to use them after the pandemic ends and (b) the different growth rates of the four types of goods, the demand for deliveries after the pandemic would be overestimated. Other technology that allows you to skip the line are meal kits or the use of a grocery delivery service, which makes it much easier to order regular food. However, regardless of family income and education level, people recently adopted food delivery because of the need that existed during the COVID pandemic. A high-risk group (people over 65 years of age) positively influenced the initial adoption of food delivery and the age variable was positively associated with the delivery of household items.
Increasing total sales through home delivery may seem like a smart way to dilute fixed costs, but restaurants that focus too much on increasing deliveries could cannibalize their in-house meals and compromise the quality of the dining experience, which could eventually reduce the base on which their fixed costs are distributed. By contrast, new permanent users of grocery delivery had the lowest income level than the other types. Among other critical issues are who takes responsibility for problems that occur at various points in the delivery process, such as whether food is left out of the house for an extended period or what is the function of the delivery service when products must be removed from the market.