Shutting click and collect ‘would wipe more than £300m for takeaway trade’

This comes after national media outlets reported the Government were considering potentially stopping click and collect services, claiming officials were concerned about long queues of people, picking up food and goods.

A source told The Telegraph​: “The general feedback is that click and collect is not working, people aren’t wearing masks in queues, people are too close to each other.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson also aired his concerns about customers collecting consumables and social distancing.

Avoid disease spreading

He said: “When people are getting takeaway drinks in cafés, then they need to avoid spreading the disease there, avoid mingling too much.”

According to the NPD Group, orders in November 2020 via click and collect takeaway (including app, online and telephone) was worth £328m – 13% of total spend on out-of-home eating in that month.

Furthermore, app or online-only ordering in the same period was worth £131m – 5% of total spend on all out-of-home eating.

Data from the group also revealed in the 12 months to November 2020, click and collect takeaways (ordered via app, online or telephone) was worth £2.9bn – 7% of total spend on out-of-home eating.

Devastating to trade

Click and collect grew by almost half (45%) in the three months to November 2020 and represented 9% of total spend.

However, also in the three months to November 2020 the total takeaway market (click and collect alongside walk in orders) fell by more than a quarter (27%) to a value of £13.7bn – down y 3.4bn visits and a drop of 42% on 2019.

The NPD Group foodservice insights director Dominic Allport said: “The impact of a Government-imposed closure of click and collect takeaway meals would be devastating to the restaurant trade, especially the small independents that so many Brits frequent up and down the country.

“Many of these operators have invested heavily to continue to provide takeaway meals to their customers during an extremely challenging time and the public has responded by increasing their use of click and collect.

“It’s no exaggeration to say for the local restaurants particularly, click and collect is now the difference between survival and closure.”