Wall Street Journal’s Jane Black reports that the coronavirus pandemic has forced restaurants to offer meal kits, prepared foods, and restaurant-quality ingredients:

“Restaurant food at home” isn’t a marketing slogan anymore. It’s reality. Forced to pivot to survive in the face of the pandemic, restaurants are producing a new profusion of top-quality ready-to-eat foods for pickup and delivery.

This isn’t takeout as we have previously known it, the usual plated entrees that don’t travel especially well. Instead, think family-size, heat-and-eat dishes and gourmet meal kits. The new offerings are redefining the way restaurants do business. It turns out prepared foods can help prop up the restaurants’ traditional business model. The profits on prepared foods can be higher than with traditional restaurant service, where chefs must estimate how many tables they will serve in a night and who will order what.