Foodservice labour market resurged in February

The Canadian labour market, and particularly that of the foodservice sector, surged back with significant growth in February 2022. That’s according to the latest data from Statistics Canada, which showed that the Canadian economy added 337,000 jobs last month, offsetting the losses in January by a wide margin. The labour force participation rate rose to […]

Canada investing in agri-food careers in wake of labour crunch

Amid the labour shortage that has plagued food production and processing, the governments of Canada and Ontario have announced they are investing up to $4 million to promote agri-food careers. A release says the investment will “help build a strong and competitive agri-food workforce that will ensure people can continue to access the safe and […]

What next for Ontario restaurants at full capacity?

By Tom Nightingale The rollercoaster that Ontario restaurants have been on throughout the last two years makes Canada’s Wonderland look tame by comparison. Operators and staff have had to get used to drastic shifts to how they can operate, often at short notice, on numerous occasions throughout the pandemic. The latest of those came earlier […]

Restaurant management pay rising along with turnover

While the ongoing conversation around the restaurant staffing crisis has largely focused on kitchen staff and hourly front-of-house team members, it’s worth remembering that the challenges are also felt by restaurant management.  As kitchen and dining room staff turnover increased dramatically throughout 2021, so did that of restaurant management positions. In both limited- and full-service […]

Foodservice suffers biggest employment drop since pandemic’s first wave

The Canadian economy lost 200,000 jobs in January amid stricter public health rules put in place to slow the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, according to Statistics Canada data. As the foodservice industry has come to expect over the last two years, it was hit hardest than most, The decrease marked the largest drop since […]

Addressing Canada’s continuing labour shortage

Foodservice’s staffing issues are nothing new, but the circumstances of the last two years have seen it snowball into a full-blown labour shortage. In September 2021, the number of unfilled jobs in the sector in Canada grew to nearly 200,000 vacancies. Restaurants Canada’s Senior Economist Chris Elliott notes that the association realized that the labour […]

5 tips for reopening your restaurant in 2022

By Megan Prevost Over the past two years, sustaining a profitable restaurant has proven difficult. Even some of the best, well-off local shops closed because of the changes in the restaurant industry. With coronavirus restrictions lifting and more people going out to eat, 2022 might be the perfect time for reopening your restaurant.  Many business […]

Assessing how restaurant shifts have been changed by COVID-19

A common topic of discussion in the latter half of 2021 within the foodservice industry was the ongoing labour shortage. That has been well-documented, but what about those staff who have been clocking in to their restaurant shifts throughout the pandemic? COVID-19 hasn’t just caused the workforce to shrink and stretched restaurant operations in both […]

How various operators are tackling staffing challenges

RestoBiz spoke to four owners and operators about the continued effect of the pandemic on labour 21 months into the COVID-19 pandemic and foodservice operators are far from out of the woods. Whereas the first year of the pandemic was characterized by panic, shutdowns, layoffs, and other evolving measures, staffing challenges have been a major […]

Survey: What’s driving Ontario’s hospitality labour crisis?

Ontario’s restaurants and other foodservice, hospitality, and tourism businesses have been dealing with something of a labour crisis in recent months. That has been attributed to a variety of factors, including staff leaving the workforce for good due to the effects of COVID-19, a perceived lack of job security, government benefits offsetting the financial costs […]