During the pandemic, restaurants have become creative and have offered new options. Those included meal kits, take-out cocktails as wells as carryout and delivery of warm food.

“For us, it was about staying alive, maintaining jobs for my team, and sending supplemental $200 checks for all of our former employees,” said Simon Kim, owner of Korean steakhouse Cote, which began selling steak care packages. “The support given to us from the community allowed us to do that.”

The survey, which interviewed over 21,000 diners and nearly 300 restaurant industry professionals in the U.S. and Canada, found that customers liked the new products being offered at restaurants. The survey discovered that 91 percent of diners want restaurants to keep offering takeout and delivery after the pandemic ends and found that 86 percent of consumers support the new ways of accessing restaurant products.

“Our world no longer can believe that restaurants are [only] brick-and-mortar places where people go to have meals,” said Martha Hoover, founder of Patachou, a 14-restaurant group in Indiana. “Customers have said, ‘We want your product, but we want to access it from all these different channels.’ Let’s give customers what they want.”

At the beginning of the the pandemic, Ohio-based Cameron Mitchell Restaurants added online purchasing, carryout and outdoor dining. The organization also developed its own internal delivery system but eventually switched to third party, as that was customers’ preferred delivery method.

“Many of the initiatives we started during the pandemic will stay, because consumers have grown accustomed to them,” said Brian Hinshaw, senior vice president of food and beverage at Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, and he believes “carryout is here to stay.”

The survey also found that a majority of customers want restaurants to provide fair wages and to offer health benefits. Customers want restaurants to move away from a model of “cheap and disposable labor” and concluded that the restaurant industry should work toward a more sustainable model.