Food and beverage industry is marking the rapid growth through the rise in the number of on the go consumers and increased adoption of ready to eat food in the market. The constant demand for quality consumable products is encouraging the industry players to come up with new food products. The demand has increased substantially for convenience food due to changing lifestyle and shortage of time among the people. Growing per capita income is also supporting the growth of the food and beverages industry. Modernization of the product flow channels in the food and beverage industry is changing the consuming patterns. For instance, easy availability of food items on the e-commerce platforms have eased the product flow and thus managed the demand. There has been witnessed a rising demand for online delivery of packed food items from COVID-19 affected economies, which is acting as a major factor for the sudden growth of the online food chains industry.
The food & beverages industry is one of the fastest-growing industries all across the globe. However, the projections seem to get disturbed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is due to rapidly changing circumstances which has compelled the government to impose a ban on all the activities that involves social gathering. The first step taken by the government of almost all the developed and emerging economies, which includes the US, China, India, UK, and Germany, was to shut down the restaurants and cafes. Considering these steps, it can be analyzed that the government will cease lockdown from restaurants, bars, and cafes, at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the food & beverages industry is one of the major sectors that have been considerably impacted with the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. Due to this major crisis across the globe, that forced the people to stay at home, the overall online food delivery has raised in comparison with the historical times. This has positively impacted the online food chains in food & beverages industry, which therefore, is projecting a considerable growth due to the outbreak of the pandemic.
The major factor for the downfall of the offline food chains includes government regulations for the restaurants and cafes coupled with the practice of social distancing, in regard to the rapidly spreading COVID-19 across the globe. This has resulted in the shutdown of all the restaurants, cafes, bars and other offline food chains across the globe. As per the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), there are various categories of the overall food service business that are being definitely impacted in varying degrees due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Among these categories, banquets being the major one has severely been impacted due to the travel reductions and the general avoidance of people in getting into larger gathering as a part of social distancing. As per NRAI, in the past few days, in-restaurant dining has also observed a major setback reporting nearly a business drop of 30-35%, along with the restaurants located within the premises of mall in India.
