Amid the coronavirus crisis, Americans are stocking up their pantries, or at least trying to. If you’re like many, you tried to place a grocery delivery / pick-up order this weekend but were unable to. Or maybe your order could go through, but wouldn’t be ready until way into the work week.
That’s because, as CivicScience data shows, week over week, Americans are ordering a heck of a lot more groceries online. The number of people who said they are shopping online for groceries is up 7 percentage points since last week.
This clearly correlates with the decline in Americans dining out. During the first week of March, a decline in dining out was evident with an uptick in people saying they are dining out less. In fact, more than 60% of Americans are reporting they’re dining out less as of this week. That’s stark.
Comparing this to eating at home versus going out, we see that around last week, eating at home started to increase. As of this week, 89% of American adults say they’re eating at home more than usual for this time of year.
While supporting local businesses by ordering to-go coffee or takeout has been encouraged across social media and in other circles, we see dining out / takeout frequency has shifted. It started the week of March 1 with ‘super light’ and ‘light’ takeout / diners switching places. Overall, dining out and / or ordering takeout for dinner is trending down.
For now, it doesn’t look too good for food delivery apps either; there’s actually been a decline, though not too steep. It looks like users went up last week when the coronavirus became a bigger reality, but this week people are unsure.
We’ll publish more data specifically on food delivery app usage due to the coronavirus later this week.
