Make your restaurant an occasion destination

Diners often spend special moments like birthdays or anniversaries at their favourite restaurants, so becoming an occasion destination means your guests associate you with some of the important milestones in their lives. This not only builds relationships with your clientele and boosts loyalty, but it may also help your bottom line by filling those tables […]

Preparing for the future of AI in restaurants

By Mo Chaar Restaurants across the country are facing a triple-threat of challenges: inflationary costs, labour shortages, and pandemic debt – and many are struggling to stay afloat. According to Restaurants Canada, only half of restaurants are profitable, with one-quarter of its members worried they won’t survive another year. While a portion of the hospitality […]

Finding ways to raise your restaurant’s profit margin

As inflation continues, it may be tempting to raise menu prices to offset costs and maximize your margins, but there’s another way. Rather than increasing what you charge, get creative with cutting costs to raise your profit margin.   Improving your profit margin means you need to know your current numbers. While your gross profit […]

Canadians get creative as rising food costs continue

As Canada’s food costs continue to rise with no end in sight and rumours of an impending recession, consumers are looking at ways to best stretch their dollars. In the last 12 months, three out of four Canadians have changed the way they buy food to try and offset the increased costs.   The recently […]

How restaurants are adjusting their menus to stay viable

Confronted with labour shortages, inflation, supply-chain stretches, and other operational challenges, restaurants are having to find a variety of ways to adjust their business model to stay attractive to consumers and stay viable within a competitive industry. Many of those changes have come on menus. Toast’s first Voice of the Restaurant Industry survey found that […]

The critical importance of loyalty members

In today’s crowded foodservice climate, offering a robust loyalty program is a must. Loyalty members visit more, spend more, and provide your business with vital insights into customer behaviour. Those were some of the key conclusions of the new Paytronix Loyalty Report 2022, which found that the top loyalty members are foundational to a restaurant’s […]

Indoor dining is back & customers want quality, rewards

Prices may be up, cost of living may be up, but indoor dining is nevertheless back on the menu big time. The recent TouchBistro 2022 Diner Trends Report released Wednesday and based on surveys conducted in June and July found that 44 per cent of consumers are now indoor dining at a restaurant at least […]

Workers returning to offices are still keen on buying breakfast

Breakfast traffic was hit hard during the height of the pandemic as the daily routine of the office worker was overhauled. The emptying of offices meant that those regular stops at diners and drive-thrus virtually vanished almost overnight. With many of those workers now back in their offices, breakfast traffic has rebounded in recent times, […]

Restaurant operators becoming more pessimistic about the future

The pain of the height of the pandemic may be behind us, but the trauma continues for foodservice. U.S. restaurant operators are getting less and less confident about the future of the industry, according to new data from the National Restaurant Association. A new survey from the association found that nearly half (46 per cent) […]

Despite labour crisis, 4 in 10 restaurants can’t afford to hire

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 […]