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Delivery data: Mac and cheese, oxtail soup top 2016 at-home orders

December 15, 2016

The market for home-meal delivery grew substantially over the past year, and Grubhub, a mobile food-ordering company, has used data about those deliveries to uncover what foods U.S. customers are hot to have at home these days. Mac-and-cheese, oxtail soup and ramen made the list. Those are just a few of the findings of analysts, who studied the company's orders from January to November this year and compared them with orders from the same period over the previous two years. 

They found that:
1.    Mac-and-cheese orders were up 373 percent.
2.    Orders for chicken and waffles increased by 234 percent.
3.    Tonkotsu ramen orders were up 223 percent.
4.    Southern fried chicken orders increased by 218 percent.
5.    And oxtail soup was up 161 percent.

The data predicted that the Top 10 trends of 2017 will include:
1.    Ternera
2.    Tamales
3.    Poke
4.    Spam musubi
5.    Takoyaki
6.    Sancocho
7.    Brisket
8.    Tater tots
9.    Pho 
10.  Patacones

Lastly, the data uncovered city favorites. They included:

• Seattle: Vegetarian samosas saw a 422 percent increase in orders.
• Portland: Panang curry up 354 percent.
• San Francisco: Carne asada burrito up 695. 
• San Jose: Butter chicken up 297. 
•  Los Angeles: Spicy scallop roll-up 180 percent. 
• San Diego: Steak tacos up 230 percent.
• Las Vegas: Garlic naan up 398 percent.
• Phoenix: Carne asada burrito up 943 percent.
• Denver: Fried pickles up 176 percent.
• Dallas: Chicken tortilla soup up 207 percent.
• Houston: Chile con queso up 852 percent. 
• Austin: Brisket sandwich up 228 percent. 
• Chicago: Tonkotsu ramen up 176 percent. 
• Detroit: Banana pudding up 727 percent.
• Cleveland: Grilled cheese sandwich up 199 percent. 
• St. Louis: Chicken quesadilla up 377 percent.
• Atlanta: Sweet potato fries up 272 percent.
• Miami: Jerk chicken up 244 percent.
• Philadelphia: Shanghai steamed pork soup dumplings up 151 percent.
• Washington D.C.: Chana masala up 301 percent.
• Boston: Kimchi fried rice up 142 percent.
• New York City: Barbacoa tacos up 202 percent.

Grubhub CMO Barbara Martin Coppola said the data revealed that Americans truly do depend on food to see them through the rough and tumble. 

"We are always looking to use our data to play back insights about big society moments impacting our users' eating behaviors," she said. "With 'A Year in Delivery,' we're excited to look back at the interesting and unexpected trends for what was a tumultuous year! Whether it was times of joy, sadness or stress, our data showed that food was always there for our users."