COVID-19 Impact Analysis Series Article Three: Ordering and Delivering

off-prem orders as % of total orders are increasing rapidly

Author: Shubham Goyal (March 24, 2020)

THIS COVID-19 impact Analysis Series designed by Punchh’s data team aims at sharing the real-time insight we have discovered when we study our consumer behavior data set. In this third article, we investigate the shift in consumer consumption behavior from dine-in to off-prem.

On March 13th, President Trump declared a national emergency over Coronavirus, stating that “next eight weeks are critical”. As we are coping with the lockdown, there has been a sharp increase in percentage-share of off-prem orders among the total orders from 40% to 59% in a matter of 3 weeks.

(dine-in orders are those where customers consume the orders within the premises of the restaurant. off-prem orders are those where customers consume the orders elsewhere)

To further understand the impact at state level, we picked the top 5 states based on the total orders at each state. Together, they contribute to 60% of total orders across the nation in our data-set. We check for changes in the %-share of off-prem orders at these states, starting from 13th of March. We found that each state has witnessed an increase of 20 to 30% in the % share off-prem orders among the total orders.

Trend of off-prem orders as a % of total orders in top 5 states in the US with most number of orders

In the map below, we displayed the decline in % share of dine-in orders among total orders for each state since the 13th of March. It can be seen that every single state experienced a significant decline, with states in East and West coasts heavily affected. Wyoming saw the least decline in % share of dine-in orders, implying that consumers are still consuming meals on premises at the restaurants to a certain extent.

Map showing decline in off-prem orders as % of total orders across states in the US

In light of these recent trends, businesses need to ramp up efforts to build infrastructure and systems that capture the shift in trend from dine-in to off-prem.

ABOUT THE DATA

The underlying data for this analysis is from 10K+ restaurant stores across the country covering 12 brands for the period of Feb 01 — Mar 31.