This doesn't line up with what I'm seeing locally at all. Almost immediately after restaurants were allowed to have dine-in customers, I started to see them packed any time I came to pick up food. Obviously there still aren't as many people dining out as before the pandemic, but most people I know couldn't wait to start going out on a regular basis again.

With that said, I do think food delivery and pickup will be more popular in general after the pandemic, but I highly doubt it will ever be as commonly done as it is now.

For the record, I'm in the US; I can't speak for other countries. Notably, I was in London about a year and a half ago, takeaway and delivery already seemed to be extremely commons way to dine.

I'd be those people just needed to get out of the house. But over the long run will revert back to their new normal of ordering in.

I don't think so. We're not talking about a week-long or even month-long surge that's starting to fade; it's been like this since the dine-in ban was lifted in early summer, and has only gotten worse now that the weather has turned. If this generalizes to the rest of the country (which is obviously not a given, but I think rather likely), we'll be back to pre-pandemic levels of dining as soon as restrictions are lifted.

Also, delivery is only a replacement for dining out if your reason for going out is the food/drink. If, on the other hand, you dine out for the social aspect, then delivery is never going to be a replacement for you. My hunch tells me that the latter is more common, but I'm not as confident in that prediction.