Fourteenth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

We investigate the consumption of restaurant meals in California by service type (dine-in, takeout, and delivery) before the pandemic, during COVID-19, and how it is likely to change after the pandemic. After randomly sampling California members of KnowledgePanel©, the largest and oldest online probability panel representative of the U.S. population, we estimated heterogeneous ordered logit models to analyze the frequency of restaurant meal purchases by service type. While demand for dine-in plummeted during COVID-19, we find that it is expected to recover after the pandemic, although with slightly fewer high-frequency diners. Conversely, the demand for takeout did not change substantially, unlike for meal delivery. Although it is still the least popular alternative, it grew substantially during the pandemic (e.g., the percentage of Californians 18 and over who never use it dropped to 54.5% from 63.0% before COVID-19), and it is expected to keep growing after the pandemic. Results from our heterogeneous ordered logit models show disparities in restaurant meal consumption with respect to social vulnerability (the ability of a community to recover quickly from a disaster). Californians with higher socioeconomic vulnerability or vulnerability tied to housing type and transportation were more likely to get takeout during the pandemic, a trend expected to continue when it is over. Moreover, Californians with higher vulnerability tied to household composition and disability are less likely to have access to restaurant meal deliveries. Our results should be of interest to restaurant and food logistics managers, transportation planners, and policymakers concerned with social justice.