Delivery would continue on this trajectory until the summer of 2021, when COVID restrictions eased and on- premise dining began to return. Observers wondered just how sticky delivery would be as the world settled into a new normal. But it never fully came back to earth. As of 2024, delivery accounted for 12% of all restaurant sales, up from 7% in 2019, according to Technomic data. Today, though still relatively small, delivery is something few restaurants can afford to ignore. More than 40% of consumers now consider restaurant delivery to be an essential part of their lifestyle, including roughly 65% of Gen Zers and millennials, according to the National Restaurant Association’s 2025 state of the industry report. And 82% of people said they’d order delivery more often if they could afford it. Cooper’s Hawk ended delivery when people started returning to its restaurants in person. But it began offering it again a few months ago after determining that many consumers prefer it. “Just because we want people to come to the restaurant, we shouldn’t preclude them from being able to get food in their home if that’s the way they want to enjoy it,” McEnery said. The pandemic “[exposed] lots of people to having their food delivered who didn’t used to do it,” said Peter Backman, who runs theDelivery.World, a website and newsletter focused on restaurant delivery. “If you like that idea, you’re gonna carry on doing it.” That said, the pandemic only accelerated a trend that was already underway. Delivery had been growing since the early 2010s as companies like Grubhub, Postmates, DoorDash and Uber Eats began to apply the principles of online shopping and gig work to food. Consumers liked the convenience and selection these services offered. Investors, ever on the lookout for the next Amazon, plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into delivery companies. It was undoubtedly an area of growth. Still, restaurants were not so sure about it. Third-party delivery posed some real issues. It was expensive, for one, with delivery providers keeping a chunk of each sale as a commission. It brought delivery people in and out of the restaurant, which could be disruptive. And perhaps most importantly, it put a wedge between restaurants and their customers. “I’m not sure that restaurants at that point said ‘This is the future,’ because it stands dead against what a restaurant tries to do, which is embrace its customers, to get to know them, bring them in,” Backman said. “All of that gets negated by delivery.” The pandemic, of course, gave restaurants little choice but to embrace delivery. And they learned how to make
T im McEnery knew the world had changed when his dad started using DoorDash. The father of the Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurants founder had always been the type to call the pizza place, put in his order and drive there to pick it up himself. Then the pandemic hit, forcing many Americans to take shelter at home in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. Dining at a restaurant was off limits in those early days, and grocery stores were risky at best. For the first time, many people, like McEnery’s dad, turned to third-party delivery services to get their food. “He learned how to use DoorDash, and my stepmom learned how to use the grocery app,” McEnery said. “It was such an accelerated introduction to DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats.” That rapid introduction was happening to restaurants as well, including McEnery’s. The upscale, wine-centric Cooper’s Hawk had never planned to offer delivery. But when the chain had to close all of its dining rooms and let go of much of its staff at the start of COVID, it launched delivery in four days. The sudden surge in supply and demand for food delivery changed the restaurant business almost overnight. Delivery sales doubled in the first three months of the pandemic, to $3.8 billion, from $1.9 billion in the three months leading up to it, according to the USDA. By the end of the year, revenues for DoorDash and Uber Eats had more than tripled compared to 2019.
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