The Pandemic Pivots That Stuck

Five years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our relationship to food and dining has undergone some permanent changes

I got COVID for the first time this past February. I was lucky to have a job I didn’t need to be physically present for, no children that needed care, no underlying health conditions, a booster shot, and ample, union-bargained sick leave. So I isolated myself at home, using Instacart for the first time to order vegetables and Gatorade. I lost my sense of taste, spiking my soups with more salt and red chile to try to feel something again. I kind of wished I had a loaf of sourdough.

Of course, I spent much of my isolation thinking about this time, five years ago. I was in a restaurant for my mom’s birthday when the World Health Organization declared the spread of coronavirus a pandemic, and, in between sewing my own cloth masks and attending cursed Zoom happy hours, my colleagues and I reported relentlessly on the crisis unfolding in the restaurant world. Most restaurant and food service workers did not have access to sick leave or any other safety net, and yet were deemed “essential.” Ultimately, cooks fell just behind nurses as the jobs with the highest COVID deaths in 2020, with agricultural workers and other food prep workers near the top of the list.

At the time, we implored anyone in power to seize the moment, and it seemed like some progress was being made. The federal government started offering PPP loans and created a Restaurant Revitalization Fund for restaurants trying to stay afloat when they weren’t allowed to open their dining rooms. Cities eased permitting regulations, allowing restaurants to expand seating with outdoor dining sheds and transforming city streets into safer and more beautiful spaces. Liquor laws relaxed for to-go drinks, and there were conversations and organizing efforts around sick leave, accessibility, air filtration, and making restaurant work less exploitative. If we must endure this tragedy, we thought, perhaps a transformed world could emerge. We could learn some lessons and make things better.

Some things did get better. But others did not, or got outright worse. Some restaurants stayed afloat on PPP loans, but the funds dwindled, and many restaurants closing now say they never recovered from the economic impact. It’s easier than ever to get food delivered to your door, and those workers have fought for fairer wages. But there’s still no federal sick leave policy, and often restaurants still don’t provide workers with health insurance or other benefits. Many cities have all but nixed their outdoor dining programs, and there hasn’t been a push to make the air indoors any safer.

Instead, we have a newfound understanding of the precarity most restaurants work within and a sourdough starter probably languishing in the back of the fridge. And in our everyday existence, markers of the early days of the pandemic still endure. When I finally tested negative again, my wife and I went to a Korean restaurant, in the hopes that the gochugaru and kimchi would jog my tongue back to life. On the way, we passed the decimated remains of outdoor dining sheds. We ordered by QR code as deliveristas filed through for their orders. During an after-dinner drink, I noticed our local bar still had a sign about needing to be vaccinated taped on the door, and, blessedly, an air purifier mounted on the wall.

Everywhere — including in this retrospective of those pandemic-era pivots that stuck around, for better or worse — there are signs and scars of what the last five years have wrought. And sometimes, hints of a better future. If only we stop thinking of COVID in the past tense. — Jaya Saxena, correspondent

Outages and supply chain challenges mean higher prices

The early days of the pandemic were marked by unexpected price hikes (a run on flour and yeast) and unpredictably empty shelves (the great bucatini shortage of 2020). Sound familiar? What was initially chalked up to pandemic-related “supply chain problems” has stuck around, with the United States Department of Agriculture reporting last month that U.S. food prices have risen by 23.6 percent from 2020 to 2024. Just look at the price of eggs, which is only expected to rise in the coming months.

According to the USDA, these price increases have been driven by a combination of supply chain disruptions, avian flu outbreaks, the war in Ukraine, and other “economy-wide inflationary pressures.” There’s also the fact that overhead costs on everything have continued to increase since the pandemic: Fast-food chains have attributed their rising prices to higher labor costs, and small restaurant owners, whose margins were already slim, passed some of the burden of their increased operating costs onto customers through higher prices and increased service fees.

Of course, corporations looking to increase profits and fewer companies having more control over the food that’s in grocery stores have also impacted prices. A Federal Trade Commission report published last year about COVID-related grocery supply chain disruptions found that “dominant firms used this moment to come out ahead at the expense of their competitors and the communities they serve,” according to former FTC Chair Lina Khan. With tariffs and the growing trade war, it doesn’t seem like prices are likely to come down anytime soon. — Bettina Makalintal, senior reporter

Pop-ups are still popping

Prior to 2020, culinary pop-ups existed of course, but they had yet to transform into the psuedo-restaruants we know them as today. The pop up — a temporary location where a chef or vendor serves food — became a mainstay of dining during the early days of the pandemic. For many chefs, particularly those serving food and cuisines less familiar to their local customer base, the pop-up served as a road to success with fewer barriers to entry. The evidence is in the numbers: According to Vox, from 2021 to 2022, pop-ups grew a whopping 105 percent in the US; from 2022 to 2023, there were 155 percent more pop-ups.

Pop-ups can either be a final destination for a menu concept, or, for those determined to open a brick-and-mortar spot, a stop along the way to restaurant ownership. Running a pop-up gives a chef a chance to explain their cuisine in their way, and figure out what works and what doesn’t without the pressure of satisfying hyper-critical investors or a landlord, a particular boon for chefs of color and immigrant chefs. And, when social distancing rendered many restaurants inoperable or forced them to operate at a reduced capacity, they were a lifeline. We saw pop-ups, which often relied on largely verbal agreements, open in spacious breweries and outside of bars. During the height of the pandemic, diners in Dallas were introduced to Nathan Bounphisai’s Inusan Onigiri, Chicagoans fell for Tilly Bagels, and Yellow Paper Burgers served smashburgers around Los Angeles. As the industry has returned to relatively standard practices, pop-ups have sustained as a way for chefs to experiment, reach new audiences, and avoid the costs — and risks — associated with building a traditional restaurant. — Kayla Stewart, senior editor

Delivery is now the name of the game

Before the pandemic hit I was only an occasional delivery orderer on the third-party apps. The fees were too high for operators, the delivery drivers gig workers with no guaranteed wage or any benefits to speak of; tips given to those drivers to supplement their wages were diverted from restaurant staffers. For many in that first year of the pandemic, myself included, ordering off a delivery app involved an ever-evolving calculus factoring in health risks and a desire to support the restaurant industry amid urgent calls to order merch and takeout when possible. But after several months of proprietors sounding alarms about the hidden costs of delivery (and several cities setting caps on the fees delivery apps could charge), and after the vaccine became widely available and dining rooms opened again, I figured that for many (meaning, those who don’t rely on delivery for health and safety reasons, and for whom increased delivery options presented a welcome change), the fervor would die down. After years reading about one of the biggest pandemic stories — the deleterious effects of delivery on independent restaurants — we understood the costs. Didn’t we?

But this convenience culture only got worse. A look at a third-party app today shows that I can get straight to my door within 50 to 65 minutes: a dog toy shaped like a water bottle, a ceramic hair straightener, a professional-grade storage container, playing cards, myriad 6- and 12-packs and sake (but no hard liquor; this is still Oregon, after all). Most major grocery retailers in my area, along with many big-box stores, have joined the apps. Ultimately, the pandemic engendered in us a reliance on the gig economy, an system where it’s proven difficult to enforce measures to ensure workers’ rights. And that’s something that will stick around long after the memories of plastic-pouched cocktails fade. — Erin DeJesus, executive editor

Everyone’s cooking at home more

As officials across the country ordered restaurants to close their doors at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, all of us were forced to become more dedicated home cooks. With all this newfound free time, we baked sourdough and banana bread and stirred together the viral TikTok tomato-feta pasta, all while navigating the chaos of supply chain shortages and less-frequent trips to the grocery store. It was, to say the least, a very educational time.

And whether you basically just bumped your knowledge from “consummate DoorDash orderer” to “competent egg-fryer” or really leaned in to mastering Japanese cuisine, there’s no denying that the pandemic has fostered a sense of culinary learning that had, in some ways, fallen out of fashion. Prior to 2020, there was so much hand-wringing over the “death of cooking” as a domestic art, and on some level, it was true that Americans just weren’t cooking as much as they used to. Not to look for silver linings in what was a real shitstorm, but our collective increase in food knowledge has perhaps prepared us for what is to come, both economically and culturally. It also, hopefully, has made us better diners. It’s made us more knowledgeable about the real costs of food, and the labor that goes into making it. — Amy McCarthy, reporter

And some of us are still growing windowsill scallions

Like many people, I started regrowing scallions and leeks on the windowsill during the pandemic because, yes, it’s cost-effective to regrow herbs and aromatics (and I was cooking the most I’d ever cooked). But also, at the height of the pandemic, observing the scallions growing day after day just added a dose of whimsy and levity to a time that was anything but whimsical and light. When the world felt truly stagnant, plants were still changing.

The act of regrowing these alliums taught me, and everyone else who participated in it, the art of allowing change to be slow. It was also a nice acknowledgment of the beauty in the natural world, even in something as simple as a green onion. It’s why I continue to have windowsill scallions five years after the onset of the pandemic; I still appreciate the reminder that we can evolve, even incrementally, every day. Plus it doesn’t hurt to always have extra scallions for garnishing a plate of steamed eggs or Korean braised tofu. — Kat Thompson, associate editor, Eater at Home

Home cooks became the big food stars

The pandemic helped reshape who is food famous. In 2025, the rising food celebrities are most comfortable in home kitchens, and many of them don’t have the traditional restaurant or culinary school credentials we might have expected from previous food stars. Consider the fact that home-cook-turned-recipe-developer Justine Doiron’s debut cookbook instantly hit No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list, outpacing Bobby Flay’s cookbook that launched the same day. Food culture may have already been heading in this direction, but the pandemic sped up the process.

TikTok saw a huge rise in popularity following lockdowns and social distancing, reporting a 45 percent increase in active users between the summer of 2020 and 2021. The platform’s initial appeal was its lack of polish compared to professionalized spaces like YouTube. Any home cook could shoot a lo-fi video with their iPhone and — algorithm willing — find an audience. Accessible food and a relatable approach gave amateur cooks an edge even over established restaurant chefs and traditional media in reaching new viewers. Amateurs no longer needed a middleman, like a TV show or magazine, to gain fans and viewers appreciated direct access to their favorite cooks.

Trust in the media establishment had already been waning pre-pandemic. The stunning breakdown of the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen in the summer of 2020 only pushed viewers further toward support of independent creators over legacy publications. In recent years, many of the TikTok creators who rose to prominence during the height of lockdowns have gained more traditional markers of success in the form of cookbook deals and food magazine features. As with food delivery apps and turn-the-tablet tipping, that which was disruptive always becomes the mainstream eventually. — BM

For better or worse, QR codes have replaced many menus

When the pandemic began, not only were restaurant-goers trying to avoid crowded spaces — they were also, understandably, wary about picking up germs from surfaces. So menus, held by hundreds of customers on any given day, were often first on the chopping block. QR codes, which folks with a smartphone could scan to pull up a restaurant’s digital menu, meant no need to pay to print paper, one less thing to clean, and you could update it at the click of a button — many restaurants signed right up, and never looked back.

The benefits of the QR code menu are impossible to ignore. While I like a printed menu, I don’t like them at establishments where the menu is encased in plastic, splotched with grease stains, nor do I miss flicking leftover pieces of baked cheese off the menus at some of my favorite dollar-ish slice shops in New York. And yet, despite their new role as a part of dining out now, the QR code is contentious, with diners lamenting the loss of a mainstay of traditional hospitality. When I go to my favorite restaurant, am I happy to see the dishes of the night listed in an elegant font, printed on a fresh sheet of cardstock? Absolutely. But sometimes, when I’m on the go and just want to grab something quick for lunch in between meetings, I don’t mind putting my phone camera up to that amalgam of Black symbols all somehow forming a standard square. And it’s a good thing, too, because like many things birthed out of a harrowing, albeit transformative era, they are here to stay. — KS

Parking lot patios continue to be a pandemic silver lining

The Hermosillo in LA’s Highland Park was a great neighborhood bar before the pandemic. It was moody and dim, with a killer beer list and a coveted rarity: about eight parking spots in a side lot. When bars shut down in 2020, ownership cannibalized a couple spots to build a small patio. But as shutdowns dragged on, the Hermosillo team gave up the rest of the parking, dropping picnic tables and upright barrels on the blacktop; over time, they added more tables, pulled out wheel stops, put up shade tents and heat lamps, and rolled in two massive trees. Now the patio is a Northeast LA essential, the kind of spot where you’ll always run into a familiar face.

In the first year or so of the pandemic, bars and restaurants across the country attempted a similar metamorphosis. Restaurateurs pushed indoor tables onto sidewalks and ate up street space to hammer out plywood parklets. In colder climates, operators built elaborate dining sheds with plastic windows and heating. But over the last couple of years, the relaxed regulations and permitting that allowed these structures expired in many places, and around the country restaurant operators unceremoniously disassembled the sheds and parklets.

But not in Highland Park. The continued success of Hermosillo’s patio is a striking example of what’s possible when we prioritize people over parking, and turn private spaces into ones that feel public. Sitting outdoors, on or near the sidewalk with a stream of passers-by, exposes us to the diverse cross-section of people in our neighborhoods. Spending more time in public encourages chance encounters among the community. In an outdoor dining shed, that may mean simple conversation. On a bar patio, it can feel like a block party with better IPAs.

Some cities see the continued value in reclaiming space from cars and diverting it back toward human experience. LA’s ongoing Al Fresco Outdoor Dining Program, which started as a temporary authorization, keeps steadily chugging towards permanence. In New York, dining sheds have come down but the Open Streets program is furthering the greater goal. The City Council in Ventura, California, just voted to permanently close a large section of its downtown to cars. Hopefully others follow suit; it might be one of the few purely good things to come out of the pandemic. — Ben Mesirow, associate editor, travel

Marcus Eakers’s vibrant works depict exaggerated human experiences that draw influence from surrealism, symbolism, animation, illustration and everything in between.