Okay, Food probably does not need any introduction, it's a need, an emotion and culture. When lockdown was announced, the world began to change the way it was working everyday. People got paranoid, people who were already paranoid got extra aversion to whatever was "normal". It pushed most of the companies to work from home, which was discussed as a future concept on 2019. And of course, FOOD has changed a lot. The way we eat, what we eat, where and how we eat, all verticals and horizontals.
People who were dependent on restaurant food, started cooking on their homes. Soon, on the ecommerce sites, the cooking utensils, popular induction stoves and microwaves were out of stock soon. Because they did not have any option other than taking a risk ordering online. Due to this, popular delivery apps changed their way of serving, and their UI's changed overnight to cope up with their business. Few such changes are temperature reporting, no contact cooking and delivery, etc.
Despite this, the paranoia did not let many order food online as usual. Lot of people who were just cooking Maggi got into their aprons and unleashed their inner master chefs. People online who were posting photos of their international trips and party nights started to post whatever they cooked at their homes. Few turned into starting their own cooking channel on YouTube. One such drink item is Dalgona Coffee, which started a trend where many netizens tried it just for the sake of posting online to escape from FOMO. Many celebrities also joined the trend and shared their experience of making with their fan following. After a while, it started to fade quickly, its drop in trend was as exponential as its rise
Sachin Tendulkar and his dalgona coffveve
Since people who were ordering online started cooking stuff in their homes, it was obvious that people wanted safety as their first priority. A recent tvc I saw advertised their ghee, in a totally different way. They were advertising butter and telling the people "if you want fresh ghee, get our butter and make it in your home in a healthy way". It was fascinating for me as they were selling one conventional product for 2 purposes, leveraging this DIY at home situation
Home cooking kits which did not find quite a market on pre covid era, started to pick up and new startups emerged in the same line. It had basic food ingredients in proportion, portion wise.
Such a startup 'Licious' started doing a new thing on the same line, delivering meat based food items. They started selling marinated meat with their original dish/restaurant names like "Caribbean jerk chicken" for ₹270 and much more. So instead of ordering the same dish in online ordering platforms, people had an option to order the same in a fresh state and cook in their homes which also enhanced the experience of eating fancy food made in home. It has also added the aspect of safe consumption, since the food is being made in the home itself, since giving it a tag "homemade"
The banner in the website emphasizing the factors "Safety" and "Fresh"
Swiggy and Zomato on the other side sitting and noticing all these happenings, started scaling their services by introducing grocery deliveries. After sometime, Swiggy launched a separate app for grocery ordering, which was also integrated into the main app. Zomato also launched a grocery delivering service temporarily for delivering absolute items in need, and later removed it when lockdown restrictions started to relax.