Cooking or Clicking: The Impact of Online Food Delivery Platforms on Domestic Food Preparation

One of the most notable developments of the sharing economy is the unfettered proliferation of on-demand services. In this work, we examine how a subset of such platforms, online food delivery (e.g., Grubhub, UberEats, DoorDash), has affected the meal preparation and dining behaviors of American households. To do so, we exploit the phased entry of the platform Grubhub into U.S. counties from 2005 to 2019 using a difference-in-difference approach. Results indicate that the availability of such delivery services leads to a significant reduction in time spent preparing meals within the home, with no concomitant change in dining out. This effect is intensified in areas subject to greater demand and in areas with a greater number of restaurants but abates when less economically feasible (i.e., in areas with higher unemployment and households with more children). We also explore the association of Grubhub availability with subsequent changes in population body mass index. Implications for research, consumers, platforms, and public health are discussed.

This paper was accepted by Anindya Ghose, information systems.

Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.02636.