There is no question that restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic hammered the foodservice industry.
A new report from USDA’s Economic Research Service measured just how severely the restaurant sector was beaten down in 2020.
A USDA ERS paper looking at the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on food-away-from-home spending, authored by Keenan Marchesi and Patrick McLaughlin, noted that the national emergency pandemic declaration on March 13, 2020, was followed by the imposition of measures by states that closed and restricted on-premises restaurant dining.
The USDA study found that restaurants of all types operating in the U.S. saw spending and the number of transactions substantially decrease following the declaration of the national emergency.
“Although restaurant spending and the number of transactions generally trended upward in November 2020-January 2021, both metrics have been slow to recover to pre-pandemic levels,” the report said.
Other findings were:
- The average spending at restaurants in March to May 2020 plummeted 29% compared with the same period in 2019;
- Spending remained below previous-year levels for all restaurants throughout the remainder of 2020, with estimates as of October-December 2020 lower by 8% than October-December 2019;
- Average total dollars spent at quick-service restaurants first showed positive year-to-year growth in July-September 2020 and maintained growth through at least early 2021;
- Quick-service restaurant sales in December 2020 through February 2021 were estimated at $23.79 billion, about 2.5% higher than the $23.22 billion in December 2019 through February 2020;
- Despite spending at quick-service restaurants increasing throughout the pandemic, transactions remained about 8% lower the last full week of April 2021 compared with the same week in April 2019, implying higher average spending per transaction, partly because of increases in party size;
- Full-service restaurant spending returned slowly in 2021. The average total dollars spent in February-April 2021 totaled $11.31 billion, which was 21.52% lower than the same period pre-pandemic, February-April 2019, though this spending is still 23.18% higher than February-April 2020 spending; and
- Breakfast spending generally returned to pre-pandemic levels (2021 versus 2019), while lunch and dinner spending in February through April 2021 remained down.