Key Horeca Results in Summer 2025
Barcelona, April 19, 2022 – The delivery and take-away services offered by restaurants in Spain have tripled over the past two years, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the main conclusion of the Insights Delivery Horeca in Spain report, prepared by Delectatech, a Big Data company specialized in the restaurant sector, which analyzed data from more than 250,000 Horeca establishments.
The figures saw a sharp increase in March 2020, coinciding with the start of the lockdown. Until that date, and since January 2019, the percentage of establishments offering delivery or take-away remained stable at around 11%. However, from the start of the pandemic, this percentage rose significantly, reaching 24.6% of establishments by July of the same year. From that point, it continued to grow, reaching 30.2% in December 2021. In terms of growth, this represents a 172% increase.
The two main cities, Madrid and Barcelona, recorded increases in delivery or take-away of 45.87% and 43.35%, respectively. Following them are Santander with 42.07%, Valencia with 39.98%, and Málaga with 38.98%. At the lower end are Zamora, Pontevedra, and Ourense, with 23.68%, 23.2%, and 21.71%, respectively.
By category, the services traditionally most suited to delivery have been pizzerias, followed by Asian restaurants, burger joints, and sandwich shops. This growth has been particularly pronounced in burger restaurants, where delivery or take-away increased by 124% over two years (from December 2019 to December 2021). In the same period, sandwich shops saw a 121.7% increase.
Newcomers to the delivery scene include brasseries, rice-based cuisine restaurants, and tapas bars. Brasseries and rice restaurants started at around 12% and 10% in March 2020, respectively, reaching 40% and 38% by December 2021, representing over 200% growth in two years. Tapas bars, which initially had almost no delivery or take-away service at the start of the pandemic, expanded this offering to nearly 20% of their establishments—a growth of over 400%.
Almost 70% of establishments (68.4%) serve their customers through one of Spain’s three main delivery platforms: Glovo, Just Eat, or Uber Eats. Additionally, nearly half of the restaurants use multiple platforms simultaneously to reach more customers. The remaining 31.6% either operate their own delivery service, use other platforms, or offer non-digital take-away.
“COVID-19 caused many establishments to find delivery as a solution to the sales crisis. What stands out is that even types of establishments not traditionally suited to this service have quadrupled the number offering delivery. The pandemic-driven market dynamics and the implementation of the rider law have created a particular chessboard scenario among the major delivery players over the past two years. After Deliveroo’s exit from Spain and the easing of COVID measures, it remains to be seen how the market will be distributed among the three major platforms and how delivery restrictions in key cities like Madrid and Barcelona will impact this. The big question now is whether delivery is here to stay and if less-traditional establishments will maintain this service once all COVID restrictions are lifted. Delivery as a model has a lot of potential and will increasingly be linked to ghost kitchens rather than traditional restaurants,”
explained Xavier Mallol, CEO and founder of Delectatech.
