Restaurant wholesale impact from COVID-19

Charting the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak on foodservice wholesale volume

Andrew McKee · March 21, 2020

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has kept people out of restaurants and prompted governments to issue lockdown and shelter-in-place orders. This has had prompted an unprecedented challenged to the foodservice businesses, an industry that already survives on thin margins.

Data from OpenTable has shown 90-100% drops in restaurant foot traffic worldwide, including US, Canada and parts of Europe.

But this data doesn't show the full picture. Many restaurants are still open for take out and delivery orders. DoorDash, Postmates and other delivery businsses has seen a surge in delivery orders. This prompts a question: what percent of restaurant business has shifted to delivery?

Orderz is a wholesale ordering platform for foodservice companies, and as such we're in a unique position to answer this question with data. Restaurants typically order inventory with 1-2 week buffer. Ordering rates on Orderz reflect the health of the restaurant industry, including both dine-in and delivery.

The dataset below shows order rates and volumes across our US and Canada portals. We've joined this data with the dine-in reservation rates from OpenTable, which shows the correlation between restaurant wholesale ordering and dine-in rates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The data shows wholesale rates declining sharply around March 17th, dropping to around 20% of previous rates. We'll continue monitoring this trend to get a sense of the recover, when it starts.

Get Dataset (JSON)