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"A lot of people don't cook at home or can't cook at home," said Ben Filecca with the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association.
He says the pandemic is highlighting how much people relied on outside businesses for their food when working outside the home.
"You know, so many office buildings are set up with full cafeterias and full dining halls."
"How many people stop at Wawa or stop at Dunkin Donuts or stop at your corner deli to grab breakfast while you're on your way to work?" he said.
Filecca says he thinks some people have been getting a crash course in home cooking.
"I think people may be on the internet looking how to cook eggs in the morning or how to cook pasta. And you see so many people selling meal kits right now with directions."
Filecca said that, in 2017, for the first time, Pennsylvanians started spending more in restaurants than in supermarkets.
"It was like 51% restaurant, compared to 49% supermarket," he said.
The numbers in 2018 and 2019 continued along a similar trend, he said — "which is why restaurant employees are essential workers."
But now, stay-at-home orders are changing that. Filecca expects 2020 numbers to be skewed back toward grocery store sales.
Trends in online grocery sales, observed since the pandemic began, are bearing this out. In the U.S., grocery shopping had only been slowly migrating online, making up 3% of the food retail market, according to a 2019 Deutsche Bank report.
As the coronavirus crisis hit, delivery orders surged with millions of Americans staying home. During the week of March 2, even before some cities and states had imposed stay-at-home orders, Instacart, Amazon and Walmart grocery delivery sales all jumped by at least two-thirds from the year before, according to Earnest Research. Instacart, a platform that partners with more than 25,000 stores in North America, says orders in more recent weeks have surged 150%.
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