Despite Covid: 38% Pass on Food Delivery

38 percent of U.S. Americans have refrained from using a food delivery service in 2021 according to data from our Statista Global Consumer Service Content Special: Food & Nutrition. As our chart shows, the most popular service is still the classic restaurant order, although its competitors are rapidly catching up.

While 37 percent of respondents claimed to have ordered food at their favorite restaurants over the past 12 months, 35 percent utilized services like AmazonFresh, Instacart or Walmart Grocery. This development was likely bolstered by restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus across the United States, which had severe impacts on retail spending in general. Data from Frost & Sullivan shows an approximate 2020 sector revenue of $25 billion worldwide, with forecasts reaching up to $72 billion in 2025. Although these types of delivery services offer a comfortable solution for consumers, they have come under fire in the pandemic due to their treatment of their workers. In September 2021, Instacart shoppers demanded a boycott of the app and "to be paid by individual order, not by a batch of orders; to re-introduce item-based commissions; to ensure the rating system doesn’t punish shoppers for issues beyond their control; to provide occupational death benefits; and to make the default tip at least 10%, up from the current 5% default" according to TechCrunch. While a sizable share of U.S. residents like to get their food delivered, data suggests they'd rather follow their own recipe than a strict meal plan: Only 16 percent of respondents claimed to have used the services of a meal-kit delivery provider like HelloFresh, which in 2018 had a market share of 28 percent in the meal-kit sector in the U.S.

Growth of food delivery in the e-commerce sector excluding take-out started to take off a couple of years ago already, but was exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. In 2019, global revenue in this segment was projected to be $110 billion according to our Statista Technology Market Outlook. By 2023, this number is supposed to triple to an approximate $333 billion.