Social distancing is accelerating business trends — could change industries forever

Online wine shopping for virtual happy hour... In this social distancing economy, things move fast. "Flattening the curve" means staying in and avoiding physical contact with people — never before has social media been flooded with so many "at-home-workout" and baking videos. It's the Coronavirus economy, aka the "corona-conomy".

We noticed something about certain disruptive trends... It looks like they're accelerating in this contact-less economy. There were already reasons to try out disrupting products — this public health crisis has added even more:

• Cord-Cutting: One of the last reasons for many to keep paying ~$100/month for cable was live sports. That's been shut down (as have the late night TV shows). People need stuff to watch more than ever right now, and might decide their sports-less cable package isn't worth it.
• Online Grocery: While egrocery is still in its infancy, more people are trying it out: a survey on March 13th showed that 1/3 of American shoppers had bought groceries online in the prior week (over half for the 1st time).
• Take-Out Only: We predicted the rise of seat-less restaurants (even though we never imagined this reason for it). Starbucks has converted its US and Canadian locations to pickup/delivery-only and Dunkin' went one step further — it's removed tables and chairs to make sure people get the message not to stick around.
• D2C Movies: With theaters closed, Universal Studios is releasing new movies directly online for streaming ($19.99 rentals to start). Historically movies only go online/DVD/Blue-Ray/VHS after a 90-day theater-only period.