Delivery and takeaway has legs as May sales boom

By Jo Gilbert

Published: 17 June, 2021

CGA’s latest Hospitality at Home Tracker shows that takeaway and delivered sales from restaurant and pub groups in GB were 273% higher in May this year versus May 2019, despite the return of eating indoors in the second half of the month.

May’s growth didn’t quite reach the heights of April’s 345% uplift on the same month in 2019. However, the 2021 May sales include the first time the public was able to eat and drink indoors since last year after months of lockdown, suggesting that the takeaway and delivered market is likely to remain an important part of the business mix for group operators.

“While many consumers seized the chance to eat out again, hospitality’s reopening for inside service isn’t diminishing the appeal of deliveries and takeaways,” said Karl Chessell, CGA’s business unit director for hospitality operators and food, EMEA.

“With the quality and convenience of at-home ordering rising, the lockdowns of the last 15 months have firmly embedded it in people’s habits. It will be fascinating to see where the balance of eating out and ordering in settles as Covid-19 restrictions loosen.”

A closer look at the figures reveals that growth in delivery sales was more than twice as high as takeaways, thanks in large part to the rising popularity of third party delivery platforms such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats.

Combined, delivery and takeaway accounted for nearly half (49.7%) of restaurant and pub groups’ sales in May, with eat-in contributing the remainder (50.3%).

Though the figures do not differntiate between food and drink sales, the delivery and takeaway market is driven almost entirely by food sales, with drinks falling by the wayside in favour of more easy to deliver food options.

CGA collected sales figures directly from 17 leading operators including Azzurri Group, BrewDog plc, Drake & Morgan, Gaucho Grill, Giggling Squid, Peach Pub Company, The Restaurant Group among others.

Printer friendly version