Canada\u2019s restaurant industry says pressure is mounting after an uneven first financial quarter of the year.<\/p>\n
Restaurants Canada\u2019s quarterly report reveals an industry \u201cunder growing financial strain\u201d in early 2026, as business owners face the brunt of the nationwide affordability crisis, rising operating costs and inconsistent spending.<\/p>\n
President and CEO Kelly Higginson says Canadians visit eateries 23 million times every day, supporting more than 1 million jobs, but when affordability is strained, there\u2019s a ripple effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe restaurant industry is typically the first to feel economic pressure when Canadians are struggling. And right now, that pressure is building,\u201d said Higginson.<\/p>\n
The report says nearly 50 per cent of restaurant operators reported lower sales in Q1, more than half reported fewer guests, and 71 per cent reported declining profitability.<\/p>\n
After 2.4 per cent growth in 2025, the report predicts a 0.2 per cent decline in real commercial foodservice sales in 2026.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of restaurateurs report food costs, labour, and seeing fewer customers as challenges. Thirty-six per cent of Canadian restaurants are reportedly operating at a loss or only breaking even \u2014 three times the rate in 2019.<\/p>\n
Under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s Liberal Party, the federal government introduced a temporary Goods and Services Tax (GST) holiday on certain items, including restaurant meals, from December 2024 to February 2025.<\/p>\n
Restaurants Canada is calling for a permanent exemption of GST on all food in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cPermanently exempting all food from GST would provide direct relief to Canadians while addressing a fundamental issue of tax fairness. Today, similar food items can be taxed differently depending on where they are purchased. This distorts consumer behaviour and undermines affordability objectives,\u201d it explained.<\/p>\n
Higginson said consistency across the tax system would help Canadians and strengthen the economy.<\/p>\n
\u2014With files from Sonia Aslam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s restaurant industry says pressure is mounting after an uneven first financial quarter of the year. Restaurants Canada\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-411660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}