Winner, Winner, Family Dinner: A Mom's Take on Off-Premises Restaurant Meals

To-go. Takeout. Delivery. Off-premise if you’re into industry-speak (which I am). In my family, the need state “to-go” satisfies is not unlike breaking the glass in an emergency: It is the Plan B we choose when we are physically and/or emotionally exhausted and dining out is not an option.

The food meal delivery industry has exploded of late—13% of the entire US restaurant market was taken up by online food delivery during COVID and by 2025, online food delivery is expected to grow to a 21% share of total restaurant market (Statista). According to Grubhub, 80% of Americans have ordered food for home delivery at some point.

Stellar food quality is my highest expectation, but it’s also cost of entry for me. So, restaurants, for your next trick, please surprise us and delight us with entertainment and convenient packaging.

Because the food is ready when we arrive home or it’s delivered, we don’t need a wait-buster activity or entertainment for my child alone—we will devour our meals and have extra time to play and laugh together. My family is looking for entertainment after the meal. To-go meals have the power to fuse the in-restaurant experience (elevated quality and craveable food we love) with the in-home experience to deliver a unique, memorable family experience. Restaurants have considerable latitude to put their spin on family movie night, game night, or (if you’re capturing lunch traffic) picnics in the great outdoors. We can’t always bring our full-sized board games to the dinner table, so a quality travel version would be the perfect solution—bonus points if you make us laugh.

Now come in close for this one as I give you a tip for impressing the moms even more: sturdy, dishwasher safe, microwaveable to-go containers or environmentally friendly options offer value beyond the first experience. A genuine word-of-mouth referral does wonders for new customers. We collect/trade/hoard/love those containers and we mention your restaurant every single time. Truth.

Meg Ross is a writer, creative, and mom