Most popular delivery order in every state during COVID-19
Food delivery has offered a much-needed lifeline to people abiding by social distancing guidelines in the last several months. It's also offered a means of restaurants staying in business amid the uncertainty of closures and what that meant for a company's ability to reopen.
As nonessential businesses were shuttered in March and people stayed home, 97% of restaurants were hit by requirements to end dine-in meal sales. The NPD Group found restaurant traffic dropped a full 22% in March 2020 over the same month in 2019—but online restaurant orders shot up by 63% and delivery by 67%. Full-service restaurants suffered 35% drops in traffic in the same month over March 2019; those that provided take-out and delivery options grew off-premise traffic 31%. But while take out and delivery won't be enough to save many restaurants, for others, delivery options—even when fraught with high fees through third-party apps—have made all the difference.
Yelp data scientist Samuel Hansen compiled the most popular delivery orders unique to every state during COVID-19. He mined the text of Yelp orders sent starting on March 16 (the day shelter-in-place orders were first enacted in the U.S.), then cleaned the text using a language-processing technique to determine the popularity of different food orders relative to their popularity in other states. Hansen's findings were published in a Yelp press release on May 21.
Some states shared favorites: Cheese pizza and gyros each ranked #1 in four states; tacos, bubble tea, sushi, and pad thai in three states, and General Tso's chicken in two states. Keep reading to see what the #1 delivery order is in your home state.
