Fast food: only “bright” spot in the Swedish restaurant sector

At the same time as the grocery retailers flourished during the pandemic, one of the hardest sectors during the pandemic was the restaurant industry. Statistics from Sweden confirm this finding, which has been told in numerous countries.

Fast food has been the only segment of the industry, which has managed to survive with rather little damages. It was one of the best performing segments already in 2019. As the pandemic hit Sweden, fast food decreased only slightly.

Fast food restaurants saw only low single digit decreases in revenue, whereas other restaurant formats saw severe declines of 30-50% for traditional restaurants and staff restaurants.

Fast food has always been naturally inclined to take out.

This has helped the segment to weather through the crisis. Where other parts of restaurant sector have had to close down and rely on the delivery apps, fast food restaurants were able to keep going with much less disruption and reliance to the delivery apps.

Encouraging 2021 with dark clouds

The year 2021 started encouragingly for the restaurant sector with high growth numbers. It will be interesting to see how the Omicron variant has impacted the restaurant sector during the last three months of the year.