Deliveroo more than doubled its number of customer orders to 149m in the first six months of the year as the appetite for takeaways continued to grow despite the reopening of bars and restaurants.

The food delivery platform revealed a 110% increase in orders across the UK and Ireland compared with the first half of 2020, and announced it now offers takeaways from more UK restaurants and food merchants than any other service.

The company has been on a restaurant recruitment drive, signing up 10,000 new sites in recent months, increasing the base by almost 30%. Deliveroo said it was also continuing to grow its network of on-demand grocery delivery options because of a “strong conviction” that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift in consumer behaviour towards buying food online.

Demand for food delivery services from Deliveroo and rivals including Uber Eats and Just Eat Takeaway boomed during the coronavirus pandemic, when lockdown restrictions closed cafes and restaurants for large periods of time. Deliveroo’s consumer base reached an average of 7.8 million monthly active consumers in the second quarter of 2021, a more than twofold increase from 3.7 million in the first quarter of 2020.

Will Shu, the founder and chief executive of Deliveroo, said consumer behaviour “may moderate later in the year” but the company remained “excited about the opportunity ahead”. He added that Deliveroo was seeing “strong growth and engagement” as restrictions are lifted.

In on-demand grocery deliveries, Deliveroo faces growing competition from a flurry of smaller rivals including Getir and Weezy. Deliveroo has about 1,800 grocery sites with major partners in the UK, up from about 1,200 at the end of 2020, and more than 4,600 grocery sites in total when also including smaller independent partners.

“We have widened our consumer base, seen people continuing to order frequently and we now work with more food merchants than any other platform in the UK,” Shu said. “At the same time, more riders are choosing to continue to work with the company because they value the work we offer.”

Deliveroo’s revenues grew to £922.5m for the first half of the year, up by 82% in the same months last year, after the company more than doubled the value of its gross transactions to almost £3.4bn across its international business.

The company, which listed in the UK earlier this year, delivers food and groceries in countries including France, Italy, Belgium and Hong Kong but will exit Spain after deciding it would require “a disproportionate level of investment” to sustain its market position ahead of “highly uncertain long-term” returns.

Earlier this week, Deliveroo’s shares reached their highest level since it floated on the stock market in March – rising by as much as 10% to 360p in early trading on Monday – after it disclosed that the German rival service Delivery Hero had taken a 5% stake.

Deliveroo’s share price opened at 371p a share on Wednesday morning before falling to just below 367p in early trade.