Tracking the Recovery of Restaurants in U.S. Cities Using Cell Phone Data

The graph below shows monthly visits to businesses categorized as “restaurants and other eating places” in selected urban counties per 1,000 residents in 2020, tracked using cell phone mobility data. The number of restaurant visits per 1,000 residents in Manhattan, a number that is usually much higher than it is for other urban areas in the U.S., was at less than a quarter of the pre-pandemic number in December 2020. In Philadelphia, restaurant visits in December 2020 were a third of the number of visits in January 2020. Among the urban counties tracked in the graph, the county with the smallest drop and greatest recovery in restaurant visits was Harris County (Houston), and even there, restaurant visits in December 2020 were at 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

Source: Penn IUR and Andrew Renninger, using mobility data from SafeGraph and county population data from the U.S. Census Bureau.