After the start of the quarantine due to COVID-19, the eating habits of the majority have also changed. For those who don't like to work in the kitchen, sworn lovers of restaurants and cafes, who are used to pampering themselves with their favorite pizza on Saturday evenings, the solution to order food at home was suitable for everyone. There is a solution for even the most cautious people who avoid any contact with others and conscientiously adhere to quarantine - contactless delivery. The restaurant guide meniu.lt decided to find out whether ordering food at home is experiencing its golden age due to the quarantine and this trend will fade after it ends, or does the current situation form the habit of ordering food at home more often?
Services are moving into virtual space
Tomas Vonžodas, director of lēkštė.lt, predicts that home delivery will be relevant even after the quarantine. Some people will still try to avoid public places and choose home delivery. For others, ordering food at home will become a habit developed during the quarantine, or a newly discovered pastime. "VoltLiis Ristal, general manager of home delivery, believes that it is difficult to predict how the situation will change after the quarantine is completely over and everyone has to adapt to this unprecedented situation. However, L. Ristal hopes that the customers who tried the food courier services during the quarantine were satisfied and will continue to order food for home after it ends. "Even before the outbreak of the virus, we noticed that food delivery service is becoming more and more relevant for people, which helps to save time in a busy life. This allows you to focus on priorities, such as spending more time with your family. Therefore, it is very likely that the food supply will remain relevant even after the Government decides to completely abolish restrictions on eating outside the home," L. Ristal concludes. A similar opinion is held by "Bolt Ruslanas Savičius, head of Food's food delivery development in Lithuania, according to him, "a well-developed service provides access to a wide range of goods, so we believe that people will use e-commerce more than before, they will increasingly order food from various e-stores and food in restaurants providing home service."
According to L. Ristal, it is important to note that COVID-19 brought global changes and the value of courier services is now different than before the virus. During the quarantine, home delivery of food made it possible for customers to stay at home and prevent the spread of the virus. Also, this service provided an opportunity to earn money for restaurants and couriers.
It's natural that quarantine adjusted both customer food purchases and restaurant operations. "The number of orders from some restaurants has increased, and some have decreased. Orders during the lunch hour decreased also due to the option of working from home - there were no large orders left for companies. Another service - food delivery to customers - has grown in particular. It took 2-3 days for the large service providers to deliver the food, so there was a lot of space and attractiveness when the food products are collected and delivered in just 1,5 hours," says T. Vonžonas.
Is home delivery a short-term trend?
Ordering food at home has become an event, especially after the start of the quarantine and at its peak. Dishes from favorite cafes and restaurants remained almost the only connection with the world. However, different restaurants have different experiences during quarantine. Adas Jazbutis, the director of "Berneliai pub" says that the numbers speak for themselves and the number of home delivery orders has increased significantly - in one of the restaurants, which has been offering home delivery for a long time, orders have increased from 30% to 80%, in others - from 10% to 60%. Beautiful located restaurant "Bella Italia" director Dalia Junčytė claims that their in a restaurant there were no major changes and the number of take-out orders was almost unchanged. Representatives of both restaurants are assured of the short-term nature of the trend of ordering food at home, believing that people are longing for live communication, and the home environment has become quite familiar to people.
Restaurants react to market changes faster than customers
Reorienting to home delivery is more difficult for customers than for restaurants, because with a large flow of news, it is more difficult to reach the customer. However, R. Savičius, Head of Development at Bolt Food, states that “the number of both customers and restaurants preparing food for takeaway is consistently growing. The quarantine prevailing in the country has only further strengthened the feeling that we are needed and can make customers’ everyday lives easier and contribute to the well-being of various catering establishments.” According to the director of lėkštė.lt, “never in 7 years of operation have there been so many inquiries from new restaurants. At the beginning of the quarantine, about 15 restaurants applied every day. Existing lėkštė.lt partners also applied asking to additionally promote them in order to receive more orders. Almost everyone changed their working hours. Some decided to work only three days of the weekend, some not to work on Monday and Tuesday. We also saw solutions when at the beginning of the week restaurants offered discounts to encourage sales.”
The head of Wolt shares similar experiences, according to her, more restaurants wanted to cooperate with Wolt: from luxury restaurants to local eateries that did not have such a service before. "We welcome new restaurants to Wolt as quickly as we can, as this requires a lot of preparation, from preparing menu photos to training staff. We've also taken additional measures to help restaurants, such as the #SupportYourLocal campaign created in conjunction with Rhetorians, which has special offers to #supportyourlocal. The price of each such offer is 18,90 euros, and delivery is free. In this way, the service becomes more accessible to customers," says L. Ristal.
After spending long weeks at home, customers have also become more picky about their food. T. Vonžonas claims that "before the quarantine, sushi, pizza and burgers were the most popular. After the start of the quarantine, when customers spent all their time at home, the tendency to order more complex dishes, which are difficult to prepare at home, emerged. There is an increased interest in Chinese, Indian, Japanese cuisine and, of course, the desire for zeppelins. Especially for young families with children, home delivery has become a salvation from cooking three times a day and from the monotony.
People are returning to restaurants, actively reserving tables
During the quarantine, many people, taking advantage of the special offers and promotions of food delivery platforms, or simply wanting to try a new service, ordered ready meals for home delivery for the first time. The development of food couriers to other cities and the expansion of delivery boundaries in cities where the services were already provided contributed significantly to the opportunity to test this service. People, encouraged by circumstances to use the home delivery service and having acquired the skills of using the platform, will be inclined to order home food (more than once). "The popularity of the food delivery service, which skyrocketed in the first half of the quarantine, is stabilizing. After restaurants open their doors to guests, there shouldn't be such a large number of home delivery orders, but the popularity of this service will remain increased after the end of the quarantine, compared to the same period last year," says Laurynas Mažuolis, manager of the restaurant guide meniu.lt.
Even though the quarantine has been extended in Lithuania, as quarantine conditions are eased, more and more people choose to eat outside instead of ordering food at home, people willingly spend time in restaurants, especially when the weather is good. However, the pandemic has affected the habits of visitors - they are more careful about spontaneous visits to popular catering establishments, preferring to arrive at a prepared, safe and secluded table. "Reservation of tables in restaurants is not only rapidly returning to the pre-quarantine level, but has already surpassed it. Society is longing for live, immediate communication, fresh and delicious food that does not need to be prepared, gourmet experiences, or simply places that have been loved for a long time," says the manager of the restaurant guide meniu.lt. "We are happy with the cities' initiative to provide the opportunity to fill public spaces with restaurant tables. We hope that soon the occupancy of the tables will reach the level of the beginning of summer last year and the city will be filled with a pleasant bustle during the days," adds L. Mažuolis. In the meantime, all public catering establishments are looking forward to the improving weather and the returning guests with it.
