August 15, 2022 How has the pandemic affected consumers and their everyday diets? A Packaged Facts consumer survey suggests that many consumers made the shift to plant-based diets during the pandemic. While this may have seemed like a temporary step, the survey shows that 30 per cent of participants are still eating more fruit and vegetables than they ...Read more about this post
August 8, 2022 New statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that amid the ongoing economic turmoil, the landscape is changing. Restaurants are finding room to hire more workers while wages are levelling out. The new data showed that restaurants and bars increased their pace of hiring in July, adding more staff than they did in any ...Read more about this post
August 5, 2022 A new survey released on August 3 by the U.S. National Restaurant Association found that the restaurant industry has a far greater percentage of female entry-level workers than female executives — but restaurants don’t necessarily report that accurately. The National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (NRAEF), the Multicultural Foodservice and Hospitality Alliance (MFHA), and the Cornell University ...Read more about this post
August 4, 2022 As the labour crisis continues to plague restaurants, we are reminded yet again that there is no simple solution. Many restaurants are still struggling desperately to maintain a viable level of staffing, and there is no easy answer. The labour pool has shrunk dramatically with many former gig workers leaving the industry, leaving operators to scramble ...Read more about this post
August 3, 2022 Price increases, price increases, price increases. Those have been the words that have defined not just foodservice but life in general for Canadians over the last few months as the effects of decades-high inflation continue to be felt in every corner. On restaurant menus, everything from appetizers to entrees to sides to drinks has been affected. But ...Read more about this post
August 2, 2022 While general inflation and the prices of gas and food are presenting challenging situations for consumers, a new survey suggests that restaurant dining remains a large part of people’s life. A recent Popmenu survey of over 1,000 U.S. consumers found that those consumers spend about 40 per cent of their individual or family food budgets on restaurants. The survey ...Read more about this post
July 29, 2022 While restaurant owners and operators — like their suppliers, their staff, and their customers — are facing severe price pressures in all areas of life, a new report suggests restaurant values themselves are also soaring. The latest BizBuySell Insight Report found that the value of U.S. restaurants being sold increased 51 per cent year-over-year in the first ...Read more about this post
July 25, 2022 Restaurants will continue to face several challenges in the evolving post-pandemic landscape, and one of those is consumers exploring more ways to feed themselves at home. Market research firm Mintel’s report on Home Meal Replacement & Grocerants in Canada found that the prominence and importance of home meal replacements and grocerant concepts have grown in recent years, reports ...Read more about this post
July 21, 2022 Restaurants across Canada, the U.S., and beyond are feeling the pinch of decades-high rates of inflation. That is manifesting itself in many ways, one of which — for many restaurants, at least — is smaller servings. But, if figures around portion size complaints are anything to go by, diners are noticing. A growing number of customers ...Read more about this post
July 20, 2022 Technomic’s latest Ignite Menu, covering changes in the Canadian foodservice industry between Q1 2021 and Q1 2022, has identified some highly trending items on Canadian menus over the last year. Overall menu item counts are up 1.7 per cent at full-service restaurants in the last year, showing a strong uptick from the eight per cent decline ...Read more about this post
July 20, 2022 Canada’s inflation rate, which has been making unwanted headlines for months, has hit another high-water mark. In June 2022, the annual rate of inflation was 8.1 per cent compared to June 2021, its largest yearly change since January 1983. Food inflation continues to outpace that figure. That figure is up 0.4 per cent from the 7.7 ...Read more about this post
July 18, 2022 The first quarter of 2022 saw the Canadian foodservice industry perform better than expected, according to Restaurants Canada’s Quarterly Forecast, although that report comes with a warning about the likely economic conditions of the next year. Canada’s commercial foodservice industry began the year with a higher-than-expected $16.3 billion in sales in Q1 2022, found the report, ...Read more about this post
July 15, 2022 Nearly half of Canadian restaurants are struggling to stay afloat and fear they will not even make it to fall. According to Alignable’s Small Business Revenue Report, 47 per cent of Canadian SMBs say they are at risk of closing by the fall due to multiple persistent pressures including inflation, labour struggles, and a stretched supply ...Read more about this post
July 13, 2022 Although prices continue to rise and more and more Canadians are forced to make tough decisions about the spending they can afford, new data from the NPD Group reveals that foodservice industry traffic in Canada reached near pre-pandemic levels in May. The data found that foodservice traffic was just one per cent off its May 2019 ...Read more about this post
July 8, 2022 “Shop local” has been a mantra for a while now, and a new survey from Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab (AAL) in partnership with Angus Reid has found that most Canadians feel that it is important that the products they see and buy at the grocery store are local. That sentiment is the strongest in Quebec, where nearly ...Read more about this post
