By Leslie Ann Roberts
In the fifth episode of Heated Rivalry, released on Crave in December 2025, Rose Landry, played by Quebec actress Sophie Nélisse, appears in a St-Viateur Bagel t-shirt. The scene lasts less than a minute, but according to Benjamin Choquette, St-Viateur Bagel’s marketing director, sales of its merchandise, particularly its logo t-shirt, nearly tripled in the weeks that followed.
In Montreal, the restaurants we love become part of how we move through the city: landmarks saved in our phones, reference points between metro stops, the first places we send friends when they visit. They shape us. And lately, we have started wearing them.
Supporting local has always been a Quebec reflex – every dollar spent at the restaurant on your corner stays in the neighbourhood, circulates in the community and keeps something alive that matters. Buying a t-shirt from the pub that served burgers out the window during the pandemic, or a cap from the wine bar where you had your first date, is part of that same instinct.
When Elena, the St-Henri pizzeria, collaborated with Ciele Athletics, it was two Montreal businesses that had spent years earning their place in this city choosing to make something together. It was a statement of shared values, local identity, and a sense of belonging earned over time.
And the idea extends well beyond Montreal. Earlier this year, Aritzia partnered with Toronto’s Prime Seafood Palace on limited-edition clothing as part of the reopening of its expanded Toronto Eaton Centre boutique. A restaurant name on a hoodie suddenly sat comfortably inside the world of a major Canadian fashion brand.
These collaborations resonate beyond the clothing itself. The restaurants that understand the emotional connection people have with them can become part of a neighbourhood’s identity in a way that outlasts any campaign.
Montreal has always organized itself around its hospitality scene. Through the bakery on the corner, the bar that stayed open during the ice storm, the café where you spent three winters writing, grieving or falling in love. Ask a Montrealer where they live and they may name a place before they name a street.
These places are how neighbourhoods know themselves. They are where we mark things: first dates, last drinks, the morning after something changed. Each one holds a version of the city that no other place quite replicates. And in a city like Montreal, where every neighbourhood has its own pulse, its own language and its own way of being, that is not a small thing.
Which is why it hurts when they go. In 2025, Entre-Deux, Bonheur d’Occasion and Taglio were among the Montreal establishments that served their last plates. Their closures were reminders that even beloved restaurants operate in a difficult and constantly changing industry. When a neighbourhood loses one of these places, what moves in rarely carries the same memory, the same story or the same sense of belonging to something specific and irreplaceable.
And yet this city has never been good at standing still. Montreal continues to make room for new ideas, new tables, and new places worth loving. We show up for new concepts the same way we showed up for the old ones. Here, pride in what came before and excitement for what comes next have always lived side by side. We respect our institutions and we also build new ones.
Belonging to a place has always meant more than simply going back; that attachment runs deeper than habit. It lives in the way people carry a place with them long after they leave.
In 2025, according to Quebec’s Observatoire de la consommation responsable, 65.6 per cent of Quebecers said they had increasingly prioritized buying local, up 6.1 points from 2024. The Observatoire connected that shift to identity, economic sovereignty, and territorial solidarity. Restaurant merch taps into that same instinct, applied to the places where we eat, drink, and gather. It is belonging made visible.
Clothing has always been a way of declaring who you are. What feels newer is what people now choose to wear: a restaurant they love enough to carry with them like a memory, much like a hockey team they were raised on and still wear years later. A place they chose- and keep choosing.
A generic storefront can fill any corner, but a neighbourhood restaurant takes years to become what it is, and only a moment to lose. In Montreal, we have always known the difference. We have always found ways to hold onto the places that hold us together, the ones that helped make us who we are – and now we wear them too.
Leslie Ann Roberts, Quebec Hospitality Ambassador at Lightspeed, draws on deep industry experience to build strong relationships within Quebec’s hospitality community and champion local restaurants. With 17 years of experience spanning restaurants, hotels, and the wine and spirits industry, Roberts brings both breadth and depth to her role.
Image from St-Viateur Bagel’s Facebook page.
