Meal kits were dying. Covid-19 brought them back to life.

In the months leading up to the pandemic, meal kits had flatlined—the number of U.S. adults who said they used one in the past month held steady at five percent, according to NPD.

“Then enter Covid, and all of a sudden, eight percent of consumers are using meal kits,” Seifer said, citing NPD ’s Covid-19 Pantry & Food Strategy Tracker. “It looks like the desire to stay inside and avoid crowds, and still have a meal solution as people find themselves cooking more, helped the meal kit sector at least temporarily.”

Brands with signature dishes have gotten into the act. Online gourmet food store Goldbelly has shipped items like Philadelphia’s Jim’s Philly cheesesteaks and New York’s Russ & Daughters’ bagels nationwide since 2013—but CEO Joel Ariel told Bloomberg that business is up 200 percent through mid-April, compared to last year, with order sizes up 30 percent. Fast-food chain Chick-fil-A rolled out $14.99 meal kits nationally in May, including chicken parmesan and lemony pasta for two; CNN reported that the company expects half its 2,363 locations to opt in.

Chris McDade, chef and owner of Popina, retooled his 34-seat Brooklyn restaurant to acknowledge the central role he believes meal kits will play. McDade was already mulling an expansion of his pasta brand into a brick-and-mortar shop, as well as a wholesale catering arm. When Covid-19 hit, he decided to make a more radical change, because occupancy limits would make it impossible to survive.

But the most dramatic change is in the space itself. All 34 seats are gone, as Popina morphs into a retail shop selling wine and imported provisions. McDade removed the counter seating along the front window to make way for a full-time pasta-maker to work in view of passersby. He tore out a banquette to add shelving for bottles of wine and amaro, an Italian herbal liqueur, and will install a refrigerated display of cheese, salumi and pasta.

The shop is open for pick-up and delivery. McDade plans to reopen the back patio as New York’s State Liquor Authority allows, on a model similar to Bacchanal in New Orleans, where customers buy a bottle of wine and open it onsite, with snacks on butcher paper-lined trays. The backyard can seat 50, though he hasn’t yet installed an awning. He’s heartened by the response so far: many new Pasta Project customers live in the neighborhood, but never knew Popina the restaurant existed.

“We’re obviously sad that we can’t continue as what we set out to be, but also excited for the opportunity to do something different,” he said.

Meal kits also play a key part in the dramatic shift Julia Sullivan has made, though she hasn’t yet determined the final structure of her business. The chef and owner of the Nashville seafood restaurant Henrietta Red, as well as the nine-month-old catering company The Party Line, closed the restaurant temporarily and, as catering cancellations mounted, turned the 4,000-sq.-ft. venue into a meal kit-delivery service, with a weekly or monthly subscription model. Although weekly sales are inconsistent, Sullivan’s rehired about half of her 60-person staff.

For the first six weeks, demand climbed sharply, until The Party Line had 175 weekly orders and a waitlist, with weekly sales of $25,000, about a third of pre-Covid weekly sales at Henrietta Red. Most of the customers were young professionals and senior citizens, so the team streamlined the menu to feature simpler offerings in small and large sizes. Sullivan bought routing software and hired two local farmers, who had been her suppliers, to to make the deliveries.

Meal kits start at $110 for four complete meals that each feed two or three, so that dinner ends up costing $9 per person; a typical offering might include a gochujang chicken entrée with roasted potatoes, or a pizza; two large salads with housemade vinaigrettes; and housemade bread and desserts. At 38 percent, the cost of ingredients and packaging is high, but Sullivan generates added income through specialty boxes for holidays and drop-off items like custom cakes.

As Tennessee edged toward reopening, kit subscriptions declined steadily, plateauing at around 65, but Sullivan sees that as a healthy foundation on which she can rebuild, alongside Henrietta Red, which reopened with takeout in early May and added patio and limited indoor dining in early June.

“If anything, people have expressed concern about catering, and also I’m enjoying this more than what we were doing before,” she said. “We’re going to try to focus on what is working, and I think this has a future.”

Full-service restaurants were struggling before the pandemic, as fast-casual enjoyed growing popularity, but Covid has given them a boost in traffic, ironically, as they transform their operations into grab-and-go models. They’re capturing 38 percent of the market (which doesn’t include convenience stores or supermarkets) compared to 17 percent in 2019, based on a survey of more than 5,000 consumers conducted by the data research firm Datassential and the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association.