Demand for social interactions: Evidence from the restaurant industry during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

We study the heterogeneous impacts of COVID‐19 on restaurants in the postlockdown United States, from lens of social interactions. We use the data structure of chain restaurants to disentangle restaurant attributes such as food and service types (which vary across chains) and local market conditions such as infection risks (which vary with each establishment's geographical location). We find that visits to chains with higher social indices experienced larger drops as local new cases increased in 2020, but also faster recovery later when vaccination programs expanded. Moreover, demand for restaurants in city centers recovered faster than demand for those in suburbs.

The Negative Effects Caused by COVID-19 and in Catering Industries in China

“…This study finds that restaurants with high social interaction indices would receive a greater impact as COVID-19 starts spreading compared to others. However, they also recover faster to the end of quarantines [6].…”

COVID-19 containment policies, digitalization and sustainable development goals: evidence from Alibaba’s administrative data

“…However, detailed administrative data on MSMEs are either seldom available for research or have been reported at a low frequency (e.g., quarterly) in surveys (Guo et al 2022;Kong et al 2021). For the restaurant industry, some researchers have indirectly inferred restaurant visits or staffing from cell phone geolocation data, webpage views and reservations (Wang et al 2022;Glaeser et al 2021); only a small number of studies have employed the actual counts of orders obtained from an online platform (Raj et al 2023). Additionally, the impact of COVID-19 on MSMEs varies considering the firm's location and characteristics, such as the area's income, whether a restaurant is a chain restaurant, whether the restaurant is located in the city center, or whether the state has different political preferences (Wang et al 2022;Glaeser et al 2021).…”

“…For the restaurant industry, some researchers have indirectly inferred restaurant visits or staffing from cell phone geolocation data, webpage views and reservations (Wang et al 2022;Glaeser et al 2021); only a small number of studies have employed the actual counts of orders obtained from an online platform (Raj et al 2023). Additionally, the impact of COVID-19 on MSMEs varies considering the firm's location and characteristics, such as the area's income, whether a restaurant is a chain restaurant, whether the restaurant is located in the city center, or whether the state has different political preferences (Wang et al 2022;Glaeser et al 2021). To the best of our knowledge, no previous study has employed comprehensive highfrequency merchant-level administrative data to quantify the long-term impact of containment policies on merchants, users, delivery riders, product variety and price discounts on digital food delivery platforms.…”

The Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on Different Industries

“…Covid-19 has had a significant impact on the restaurant industry; although the severity of the outbreak varies, almost every local government has issued an order to strictly prohibit restaurant dining from maintaining social distancing; these measures are very effective in the aspect of reducing people's interaction, thereby reducing the spread of the virus, but also making the global catering industry market demand shrink sharply, posing a significant threat to the survival of the restaurant industry [6]. The long-term closure has led to a backlog of rotten raw materials, store rent, the basic salary of employees, management costs, and other losses, making the operators lose a lot.…”