From in-person sales to home deliveries, buying food has changed

From third generation commercial fisherman Nicholas Haworth in San Diego to Eric Cohn, who's primary job is restoring homes, in Arizona, people across the country are changing the way they work to make ends meet.

Colette Luke has more.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) THIRD GENERATION COMMERCIAL FISHERMAN NICHOLAS HAWORTH SAYING: "Our business selling to restaurants and wholesalers has basically stopped." Third generation commercial fisherman Nicholas Haworth, like others in the food industry across the US, must now find new ways to make ends meet.

With restaurants closed and a big catch of fish to sell, his only option is to sell directly to the public.

So he set up at Tuna Harbor Dockside Market in San Diego, California and started doing door-to-door deliveries of fresh fish.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) THIRD GENERATION COMMERCIAL FISHERMAN NICHOLAS HAWORTH SAYING: "we've gotten a lot of support from the public and they're able to help us out and, yeah, they've been buying a lot of our fish and we've been giving the public a lot of our fish here." Last Saturday, Haworth had about 300 people line up to buy fish at his market, standing six feet apart on taped markers.

After selling his initial haul, Haworth has also turned to processing catches from other fishing crews and packaging the fish to sell.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) THIRD GENERATION COMMERCIAL FISHERMAN NICHOLAS HAWORTH SAYING: "Demand is really high right now.

People are buying a lot more fish than they normally would.

Normally somebody comes down and gets 2 or 3 pounds.

Now they're coming down and getting 10 pounds, 15 pounds, stocking up for their freezers." With over 90% of the U.S. population under orders to stay home, direct-to-customer sales and delivery are increasingly necessary.

Among a new class of front-line workers delivering food to people's houses is grocery delivery shopper Eric Cohn in Tucson, Arizona.

When the stay at home orders threatened his primary job of restoring homes, he took on a part-time job with the app-based delivery company Instacart.

Although he wears a respirator mask, goggles and gloves - items he used during his restoration job - Cohn said he often feels vulnerable in the supermarket checkout line as other customers get closer to him than the recommended 6 feet.

And concerns like those have led many restaurants to forgo delivery and close altogether including the Guatemalan restaurant IX in Brooklyn.

The owners of IX - which opened three years ago, said they decided to close their three restaurants over concerns about staff safety.

Their final food deliveries, they said, were sent to police, doctors and nurses -- free of charge.