IHOP's new burritos show the importance of to-go options with fewer commuters stopping for breakfast on the way to work

• IHOP is introducing a line of breakfast burritos and bowls.
• The new dishes are an attempt to attract more takeout customers.
• The pandemic hurt IHOP's sales in 2020, and it announced closures of 100 restaurants.

IHOP is adding new breakfast bowls and burritos to menus as a to-go option.

The six new options start at $5.99, and include country breakfast, spicy poblano fajita, and southwest chicken.

"Burritos are the #1 fastest growing breakfast menu items in America. so, as the breakfast leader, IHOP needed to create some great ones," Chief Marketing Officer Brad Haley said in a statement.

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IHOP's statement also emphasizes the convenience of the new dishes as takeout orders.

"We know our guests are looking for menu items that are portable for take-out and delivery, which made our new line of Burritos & Bowls a natural fit," Haley said.

Restaurants have increasingly turned to takeout and delivery to reach customers after the pandemic and stay at home orders shuttered dining rooms. Even in places where indoor dining is open, capacity restrictions and reluctance from customers to return has kept business down.

Online ordering technology jumped ahead because of the pandemic as customers tried to avoid unnecessary contact with others, and take out and delivery have boomed. 80% of respondents to an Insider Intelligence survey in July were ordering food to go, and 78% of respondents increased their frequency of ordering food online. For fast-food chains, this also meant a boom in drive-thrus, leaving restaurants that were primarily based around indoor dining, like IHOP, to rely on to-go orders.

Like many restaurants, the pandemic hit IHOP hard, and these new menu additions look like a way to recoup some losses. In October, IHOP parent company Dine Brands told Insider that it would close nearly 100 "underperforming" locations over the next six months. Sales were down across the chain in 2020, with sales down 40.4% in the second quarter and 23.5% in the third.

"I'd like to highlight that the overall breakfast category in general remains challenged, as the morning meal has been oftentimes replaced at home, due to the diminished work transit," IHOP president Jay Johns said to investors.