Deliveries up but takeaways down as new openings lift at-home sales in August

It extends a long run of modest year-on-year comparisons for the at-home channel, with growth remaining below the rate of inflation throughout 2025. However, August’s performance was slightly ahead of trends in eat-in sales, with the CGA RSM Hospitality Business Tracker—based on a separate cohort of operators—showing restaurants’ like-for-like sales dropped 1.6%. It suggests that with spending under pressure, some consumers were switching from eating out to ordering in over the Summer.

The Hospitality at Home Tracker shows deliveries significantly outpaced the at-home market as a whole in August. Like-for-like delivery sales were up by 5.6% from August 2024, while takeaway and click-and-collect sales dropped 8.4%. This extends a long-term shift from picking up food from restaurants to the convenience of delivery to the door from third-party providers.

While like-for-like sales have been broadly flat, rollouts of more delivery options have helped to generate strong growth on a total basis. Adding in restaurants that have been opened by groups in the last 12 months, or where deliveries and takeaways were introduced for the first time, total sales rose by 11.4%—a sign of the capacity for further growth in deliveries and takeaways.

Karl Chessell, director - hospitality operators and food, EMEA at CGA by NIQ, said: “Restaurants have found it hard to sustain real-terms growth in delivery and takeaway sales this year, and August’s numbers show many consumers remain hesitant about spending. Any modest increases have largely been driven by higher menu prices or new openings, while rising costs are sapping operators’ profit margins. Operators will be anxiously hoping that spending loosens in the final third of the year, but they will need to stay relentlessly focused on the quality, value and efficiency of their delivery operations.”