Restaurants Canada is looking for some form of relief from various levels of government to deal with the lasting impacts of the pandemic.
Restaurants were among the hardest-hit by public health measures that were imposed to prevent the spread of COVID.
During that time restaurants had to pivot, providing curbside pickup and other measures, but they lost a lot of employees as well who haven’t come back.
Jordi Morgan says restaurants are operating on razor-thin margins, with 62 per cent across the country just breaking even, or losing money while the rest are only reporting two to eight per cent margins.
“This is really the echoes of the pandemic that we’re dealing with,” says Morgan. That’s why Restaurants Canada is working with federal and provincial governments to find “some relief” against inflation, labour costs, and other pressures that are “really squeezing restaurants quite a lot right now.”