Few industries benefited as dramatically from the coronavirus pandemic as food delivery. While restaurants shuttered dining rooms and millions of workers stayed home, platforms like Uber Eats, Menulog, and DoorDash recorded order volumes that would have taken years to achieve under normal growth conditions. Coronavirus became, in industry terms, a tailwind: a force that pushed the sector forward faster than any marketing campaign or pricing strategy ever could have.
What happened to food delivery during COVID-19
When state governments across Australia imposed lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, dining in became illegal overnight. Restaurants faced a binary choice: pivot to delivery or close entirely. Thousands chose delivery. The result was a surge in platform registrations, both from restaurants joining for the first time and from consumers who had never ordered through an app before.
Uber Eats reported that its Australian user base grew substantially during the first lockdown periods. Menulog, which had operated in Australia since 2006, saw order numbers spike in a way the platform described as unprecedented. The demographic of the average food delivery customer also shifted: older Australians, who had historically avoided app-based ordering, adopted it out of necessity and many kept using it after restrictions lifted.
Three structural shifts drove that growth:
- Restaurants that had resisted delivery platforms accepted them as the only revenue channel available.
- Consumers built new ordering habits during extended lockdowns that outlasted the restrictions themselves.
- Ghost kitchens (commercial kitchens operating purely for delivery, with no dine-in component) expanded rapidly because the model required no front-of-house investment.
The delivery rider: opportunity and risk
Delivery riders occupied a complicated position in this boom. Demand for riders surged as order volumes climbed, and platforms recruited heavily. For many Australians who lost work in hospitality, retail, or tourism, gig-economy delivery work offered income when alternatives were scarce.
But the risks were real. Riders work in traffic, often under time pressure, and their income depends entirely on completing orders. A collision, an injury, or a mechanical fault can end a shift and a week's pay in the same moment. Standard personal car or bike policies typically exclude commercial delivery use, meaning many riders were underinsured without knowing it. Bike insurance for delivery riders covers the specific risks that come with commercial riding, including third-party liability while on a delivery job, which standard policies exclude.
The expansion of the gig economy during COVID-19 also sharpened a policy debate that had been simmering for years: whether delivery riders are employees or independent contractors, and what protections they're entitled to. That question still isn't fully resolved in Australian law.
Ghost kitchens and the restaurant rethink
The ghost kitchen model predated COVID-19, but the pandemic accelerated its adoption by years. A ghost kitchen needs no signage, no waitstaff, and no dining room. It needs a commercial kitchen, a registered food business, and a platform listing. In a period when a dining room was a liability rather than an asset, that logic was hard to argue with.
Established restaurant groups used the model to launch delivery-only brands alongside their main venues, often selling a completely different menu. A Thai restaurant might run a separate burger brand from the same kitchen, targeting a different demographic on the same platform. This kind of low-overhead diversification became a genuine survival strategy.
The regulatory side of running a food business, including council approvals, food safety certification, and business registration, applied to ghost kitchens exactly as they would to any other food business. Many small businesses fail by underestimating compliance requirements at launch, and the ghost kitchen rush was no exception. Operators who skipped food handler certification or failed to register correctly with local councils found themselves shut down.
What stuck after restrictions lifted
The defining question for the industry post-pandemic was whether the growth would hold. The early evidence suggests much of it did.
Consumer behaviour proved stickier than analysts expected. Ordering habits formed during lockdown became routine. People who first downloaded a delivery app to survive a lockdown kept using it on Friday nights when restaurants had open tables again. The convenience had been demonstrated, and convenience rarely un-sells itself.
Platforms also used the pandemic period to invest in logistics, expand coverage to regional areas, and sign up restaurant categories that had previously resisted delivery (sushi, premium dining, specialty bakeries). That expanded catalogue made the platforms more useful to more customers, compounding the retention effect.
Pricing came under pressure too. As platforms matured and competition between Uber Eats, Menulog, and DoorDash intensified, delivery fees and service charges became a point of friction. Restaurants began pushing back on commission rates, which on some platforms sat above 30 percent of order value. That tension hasn't fully resolved, and some restaurants now run their own direct ordering systems alongside platform listings to reduce their fee exposure.
What the food delivery boom means for small business owners
The food delivery story is, at its core, a small business story. The restaurants, riders, and ghost kitchen operators who navigated the pandemic were mostly sole traders and small operators making fast decisions with limited information. Some thrived. Some didn't.
The ones who survived fastest tended to be those who understood their costs clearly, registered correctly, carried the right insurance, and treated the delivery platforms as a channel rather than a lifeline. Platforms take a significant cut. A business that doesn't know its margins before it goes live on a delivery app can generate high order volumes while operating at a loss.
For anyone building a food business today, whether a bricks-and-mortar venue adding delivery or a new ghost kitchen, the lesson from the pandemic period is practical: the demand is there, the platforms are established, and public liability insurance for food businesses covers the customer injury and property damage claims that come with operating in a commercial kitchen environment. The infrastructure exists. Getting the business fundamentals right before the first order arrives is what separates sustainable operators from the ones who scaled fast and folded quietly.
Coronavirus gave the food delivery industry a growth surge that no amount of venture capital or marketing spend could have manufactured. The platforms that already existed captured most of the upside. The challenge now is building food businesses that don't depend on another external shock to find their customers.