As Covid-19 has turned the world on its head, few industries have been as shaken up as that of restaurants and hospitality. Worldwide, restaurants and eating establishments have taken a beating as lockdown has resulted in closures, changes and restrictions to what used to be a burgeoning industry.
Borderless Access conducted research to understand eating out and ordering-in habits and how these have been shaped – both temporarily and permanently – by the ongoing global pandemic. Unsurprisingly, ordering in has been by far the most utilized activity in recent times… ordering food for delivery, ordering take-aways from a restaurant and ordering/ collecting food from a fast-food chain have been the top activities globally in the past 3 months, and both of these have been particularly well-utilized in both the UAE and Saudi.
With the changing lockdown rules, 56% of people globally have eaten at a restaurant in the past 3 months, with this number being higher in the UAE and Saudi, at 68% and 60% respectively. Ready-meals are much less common than ordering in, while fresh produce deliveries and home-meal-preparation kits are by far the least common ways of preparing food.
