I think the "this" in the text refers to the paragraph before your excerpt, i.e. the pandemic caused a lot of regular people to eat their food outside instead o

I think the "this" in the text refers to the paragraph before your excerpt, i.e. the pandemic caused a lot of regular people to eat their food outside instead of in rastaurants. "Getting to that point, where _a global pandemic_ was kind of an annoying blip in my life, was a long strange journey. It included nearly six years of homelessness. While homeless, my sons and I routinely tried to find out-of-the-way public tables. For purposes of germ control, we didn't want to eat in restaurants and homeless people aren't welcome in restaurants anyway. So we would get takeout and go find a table somewhere outdoors. Much to our annoyance, _this_ popularized some of our favorite out-of-the-way eating places."