Delivery Services May Be In For A Rough Patch As Atlanta Restaurants Start Filling Up Tables

Restaurants were among the earliest and hardest-hit sectors in the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With most dubbed “essential services,” many chose to replace their china and silverware with plastic clamshells.

Delivery companies like Uber Eats, DoorDash and GrubHub began to cash in on a surge in takeout meals, as the pandemic forced Georgia restaurants to stop dine-in services for some time.

Now with the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly updating its face mask guidelines and forgoing a masks for those who are fully vaccinated, more restaurants are filling up tables and returning to pre-pandemic service. That means the boom in delivery is about to take a hit.

WABE’s “All Things Considered” host Jim Burress spoke about a predicted drop in delivery demand with Emory Goizueta Business School professor Dan McCarthy. His latest research cites industrywide delivery sales went from 23 billion to 51 billion in the United States — and delivery growth was largely due to people replacing on-premise restaurant visits with online or delivery orders.