PITTSBURGH — With restaurants closed and stay-at-home orders in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19 during the early months of the pandemic, Americans responded in the only way they could at meal time.

We started cooking at home more than ever before, even though it was harder than ever to find some ingredients on store shelves. And all the while, grocery stores had to alter their occupancy levels and traffic patterns to allow for social distancing.

We also took up baking in record numbers, particularly of bread as friends shared sourdough starters or re-discovered long-forgotten bread machines in our basements, leading to flour and yeast shortages all over the country.

"With COVID I was able to get that love of cooking and baking back," shared Peg Morrow of Ellwood City in an email. "My bread baking skills certainly improved with practice. I combed the internet and the Post-Gazette for new recipes trying new procedures never before attempted."

It was a commonly echoed sentiment.

"I have happily been making bread again," says retired geologist Peter Hutchinson of Murrysville, after his daughter replaced the bread machine he gave to his wife in 1999 (that made "a ball of goo") with a new model. "And so has many of my friends who also discovered their bread makers."

Mark Mastandrea, who had just followed his wife, Donna, into retirement when the world shut down in March 2020, is another who took advantage of the pandemic to improve his culinary skills.

Before the shutdown, the Shaler resident recalls in an email, "I was an adequate, by the numbers cook. Many recipes I made were demonstrably good, but I always felt something was missing."

With more time on his hands, he was able to commit to preparing healthy food and entertaining his wife by cooking most of their meals, 7 days a week, 365 days a year — think breakfasts with homemade oat flour pancakes, grilled cheese lunches and dinners featuring creative dishes like rum and coke salmon

"The time we spent included finding recipes, watching cooking shows, buying new cooking tools and spices online and developing new ways to source ingredients, including the Bloomfield Saturday Market and Pennsylvania Macaroni online store with pickup in the back alley," he writes. "The end result was improvements in planning a meal, preparation techniques, food presentation and enjoyment of the home dining experience."

Five years later, grocery shelves are once again full (if more expensive than ever), restaurants are busy and consumers are returning to pre-pandemic habits and cooking less frequently at home, driving shifts in spending.

Or as Mastandrea notes, "Projects like all-day seafood stocks [have been] replaced by grilled seafood and roasted veggies. We no longer toast whole oats and made our own oat flour. Gone are the four separate charcuterie plates for each family 'pod' at a socially distanced picnic. What remains is the "Been There, Got the T-Shirt" of going from doing what you had to do, to confidently doing what you love to do."

Less cooking, more online shopping

Today, Americans spend a majority of their food budgets on dishes prepared outside the home, according to a 2024 survey by the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts based on USDA data — 55.7% on dining out and ordering takeout versus 44.3% on groceries.

But if we're shopping less for the ingredients we need to make dinner, we're also shopping a little differently for groceries in 2025.

Nearly 20% of shoppers of all ages engaged in online grocery shopping at least once in the past month, according to a report by the USDA.

Ordering groceries online for pickup or delivery was hardly a new technology when COVID-19 hit: Giant Eagle started offering it at some of its Market District stores around 2012, says Heather Feather, Giant Eagle's senior director of digital and eCommerce strategy. Walmart — the largest grocery chain in the U.S., with over 4,700 stores nationwide — began piloting online ordering with grocery pickup in 2013 in Denver.

"It was starting to pop up with other retailers, and we saw a lot of of opportunity for convenience and wanted to really get ahead of the demand," says Feather.

But it really started to take off in 2018, as improved technology made online grocery shopping more accessible, appealing and streamlined. Consumers steadily grew to love its convenience.

That year, Walmart brought grocery delivery to 100 metro areas serving 40% of the U.S. population. Giant Eagle followed suit, expanding the service into more stores across the metro area.

"We identified this as an upcoming trend to capture the next generation of shoppers," says public relations manager Jannah Drexler. "We were really at the forefront."

The pandemic, which forced groceries to change their operations in response to public health concerns, and the accompanying shift in customers' shopping behavior (remember the footprints on the floor that told shoppers which way they were allowed to walk? And special hours for elderly and immunocompromised shoppers?) only helped grow demand.

At Giant Eagle, for instance, demand tripled almost overnight, says Feather.

"We all remember where we were that week [when everything got shut down] because it really tested our technical systems and our teams in the stores who were filling orders," she says. "But it was a great learning opportunity and it encouraged guests to try the service who hadn't before."

According to a 2020 survey by Supermarket News, nearly 80% of U.S. consumers shopped online for groceries in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. And grocery shopping online has continued to grow in popularity among customers of all ages and lifestyles — from busy families and working professionals to elderly people and those unable to leave their homes — to the point where more than 90% of shoppers now purchase groceries both in store and online.

Today, Walmart can make same-day store deliveries to 93% of the U.S.

"It has definitely continued to grow, not only in demand, but we're seeing that people want it even faster," says a spokesperson for Walmart, which now offers expedited on-demand delivery in less than three hours and express delivery in 1 hour with an added charge.

To make grocery shopping even easier for customers, the superstore has even created special, one-click shopping list on its website where people can purchase everything they need in one fell swoop for events like the Super Bowl, Thanksgiving and Easter.

People apparently don't mind coughing up a few extra bucks to get things sooner rather than later; in the past year, more than 30% of delivery orders were expedited at Walmart. The company has also enjoyed four consecutive quarters with 20% growth or higher in eCommerce driven by pickup and delivery.

eCommerce grocery shopping is also brisk at Giant Eagle. Pittsburgh's largest grocery chain currently offers curbside pickup at 104 supermarket locations, and home delivery is available broadly across its markets, says Drexler.

Filling those baskets

Perhaps not surprisingly, Sunday is the busiest day for online shopping at Giant Eagle, says Tim Westine, 28, a curbside team leader at the South Hills Market District who has worked six of his nine years in the chain's curbside division.

What does surprise is how quickly the 3,000 dedicated curbside team members responsible for filling the region's online orders — identified by their bright green t-shirts — load their bins with the wide variety of produce, canned items, meat and anything else a customer has put on the list. While every day is different, the 45 team members Westine supervises can fill up to 1,200 orders a week, which means they have to be both quick and efficient.

"It's really a robust process," says Feather.

During the early days of the pandemic, many orders were for non-perishable packaged foods like cereals or cases of water and paper items like toilet paper. And customers often had to wait up to two or three days to secure an available spot.

"People were waking up at midnight to place an order," remembers Westine.

"We were at capacity with both staff and product," agrees Wexler. "We were really maxing out."

Today, it's less about pantry items and more about the fresh items needed for daily cooking like produce, meat and dairy.

Save for hot foods, everything that's available on store shelves can be ordered online, Wexler notes, and customers can earn and redeem the same perks as in-store shoppers. And the service is free for pickup with a minimum $35 order; delivery — which is available in as little as three hours — costs $9.95. Food items can also be purchased online with SNAP benefits.

While the service might seem impersonal, there's actually quite a bit of one-to-one interaction between customers and team members, says Westine, who graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2018 with a math degree and started working for Giant Eagle during college.

If a team member has to make a substitution as they shop with a handheld device that both shows the customer's order and where the items are located in the store, they send a text.

"We get bananas on almost every single order, and you can leave a note for your shopper if you want them bigger or smaller or green," notes Feather, "so it really is a personal service [where] you get exactly what you want."

Drexler adds that one of the big benefits on Giant Eagle's online shopping program is how thoroughly trained team members are. While some might like to choose their own tomatoes or smell a fish fillet before buying, "they're shopping as closely to the order as possible so when it's picked up or delivered, no one is dissatisfied."

The fact the grocery store recently entered into third-party partnerships with Instacart, DoorDash and Uber Eats has only made online grocery shopping easier, faster and more convenient.

While the vast majority of its business is still brick-and-mortar, of in-store shopping, Drexler says "we [have] so many people getting into the [online] space."

She adds, "It will be interesting to see how it evolves and grows over the next years" as people get more comfortable with allowing others to do their shopping.

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