Spending Gap Between Full-Service and Quick-Service Restaurants Widened During Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic

April 22, 2022 Keenan Marchesi, USDA ERS

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic sparked an unprecedented shift in the way U.S. consumers spent money on food, particularly at restaurants and other food-away-from-home (FAFH) establishments. To document changes in consumer FAFH spending, researchers from the USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) recently worked with proprietary data from a market research organization that were collected before and throughout the pandemic.