Operations

More than 3K Canadian restaurants shuttered over past year

iStock Photo

May 5, 2022

A total of 3,344 Canadian restaurants went out of business in the last 12 months, according to a new report from Unified Data Lab. The Store Connect report is a monthly census of newly opened restaurants and closed restaurants. The US restaurant industry did not fare much better with a record 29,326 restaurants going out of business in the past 12 months, according to a press release.

"As we emerge from the two years of the pandemic, we are now starting to fully understand the true impact lockdowns and stay-at-home mandates have had on the Canadian restaurant industry. Unfortunately, many of the restaurant closures are mom and pop independent restaurants but chains such as Subway and Starbucks also closed a record number of locations in Canada," Kyle Brown, co-Founder of Unified Data Labs, said in the release.

According to Unified Data Labs, the cities with the most restaurant closures include Toronto, Montreal, Scarborough, Mississauga, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

The restaurant industry in Canada has been forever altered by the effects of the pandemic, said industry expert Robert Carter of The StratonHunter Group. "It's unfortunate that so many restaurants have gone out of business," he said. "In Canada, we have always had a robust and vibrant industry, representing over $90 billion in annual sales. But there is little doubt that the landscape has changed forever, especially amongst the most entrepreneurial of restaurateurs, the independent operators, who were hit especially hard."