More people are bringing lunch to work. That’s a bad economic indicator.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Office fridges are getting crowded with employee lunches. Inside the office fridge, maybe behind a “Don’t Touch!" Post-it Note, is a telling economic indicator: More employees are eating lunches brought from home than they have in years.

Millions of people have been called back to work in offices, but that’s not the massive windfall that restaurants, salad bars and sandwich spots had hoped for after the Covid-19 pandemic decimated their midday business. Many workers are finding picking up lunch is too pricey, and more are schlepping in tupperware and brown bags than they did a year ago. Nationwide, the number of lunches bought from restaurants and other establishments fell 3% in 2024 from the year before to 19.5 billion—fewer than were purchased even in 2020—the height of the pandemic work-from-home era, according to consumer-analytics firm Circana.

Meanwhile, purchases of food from grocery and other stores that shoppers intend to eat at home or bring to work for lunch climbed 1%. Bethany Kennedy, an attorney near Buffalo, N.Y., says she used to spend $500 a month going out to lunch during the week. Rising costs, including a jump in her property taxes, made her reconsider.

Now she limits herself to one lunch out a week—when she’s really craving it. She brings in premade meals such as Southwest salads with corn, beans, cheese and tortilla strips or Stouffer’s three-cheese rigatoni from her local Aldi the rest of the week. She revels in saving money, but there is a downside, she says: “I’m starting to get bored." The shift is a threat to the ecosystem of delis, cafes and other office-area eateries that already went through near-extinction in the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, when thousands