Wasting away – Restaurant food waste is a crisis that can be avoided
Every year, about 20% of all the food produced in Canada (11 million tonnes) is lost or wasted, according to Value Chain Management International (VCMI). Recent data collected from the foodservice industry (including restaurants, hotels and institutions), indicate 38% of produce, 21% of dairy, eggs and field crops, and 20% of meat products becomes waste. Some estimates peg waste closer to 60%, or 35.5 million metric tonnes with a…
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The Millennials are key to your restaurant success
Breakfast for dinner? We can thank social media for popularizing this trend. A Twitter storm a few years ago helped McDonald’s Canada to decide that breakfast-for-dinner was here to…
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Salads make perfect patio companions for summer dining
Nothing says summer more than green — grass growing, trees in full leaf, gardens showing their green. Green is all over the menu too, but is definitely the headliner for salads. Enchant your…
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Nurturing a healthy work environment makes for a happy restaurant
Do you lead a fair kitchen? According to Fair Kitchens, “A Fair Kitchen is a positive working environment where staff happiness is as important as diner satisfaction.” …
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Baby Boomer consumers are still a big deal in your restaurant
If you can remember Encyclopedia Britannica, Swanson TV dinners, party lines, TV converter boxes, banana seat bicycles, transistor radios, the Sears Wishbook catalogue, and the last Stanley…
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Take your act on the road with a food truck
Food trucks are having a moment… again! With the pandemic still keeping a number of restaurants closed or confined to takeout & delivery, the food truck — a sort of pop-up version of…
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Is there enough diversity and inclusion for BIPOC in Canada’s foodservice industry?
“The foodservice and hospitality industry is made up of many Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, and new Canadians, who all contribute to our industry, and it could not function without…
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What does the future hold for foodservice? Here are 7 top trends to keep you on track
Hindsight is 2020, as the old expression goes. Certainly, as we rounded the corner in 2019, the prospect of a bright new year was uppermost in our minds. Who could have foreseen a pandemic…
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How’s your mental health during Covid?
Even before COVID became part of our daily vocabulary, the foodservice and beverage industry had high rates of mental health challenges and substance use issues. It can be a stressful job at…
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How to make your restaurant an allergy-friendly operation
According to Food Allergy Canada, over three million Canadians (9.3%), including almost 500,000 children, have food allergies. Reactions range from mild to life-threatening so those with food…
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Proud to be – Indigenous cuisine rises up
As a little girl on the Blood Reserve in southern Alberta, Shantel Tallow watched her elders prepare food the traditional Blackfoot way from what they had hunted and gathered. “Those…
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We have definitely reached the tipping point
Bruce McAdams is the Associate Professor, School of Hospitality, Food, and Tourism Management, Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph. After coming from a…
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Have restaurants reached the tipping point?
Tipping has rattled restaurateurs for years, as they struggle with the merits of tipping and tipping policy. Are tips shared? How are they factored into servers’ wages? What’s the…
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COVID-19 and restaurants — how are consumers reacting?
Is it all doom and gloom? According to projections by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce (based on Statistics Canada research), 60% of operators are at risk of closure by the end of 2020. Dark…
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Has COVID-19 killed sustainable packaging?
What happens when the sustainable food packaging movement collides with a global pandemic? New evidence shows that use of single-use plastic food packaging increases, while at the same time…
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Time to mine the untapped potential in GenZ
What comes after X and Y? If you said, “Zed” or “Zee,” you would be partly correct. When it comes to demographics, the group order is Boomers, GenX, GenY, and then…
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Restaurant operators are turning their kitchens into ghosts
Ghost kitchens (also called virtual kitchens, cloud kitchens, dark kitchens) are delivery-only spaces that have the back-end without the front. No seating areas, no counters, no servers, no…
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Pandemic lessons. Don’t wait for the next one to prepare for the unknowable
How do foodservice operators plan for the unknowable? While not recommended, surviving a previously unimaginable experience — like the first wave of a pandemic — is one way. Before Canada…
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Vegan goes mainstream and foodservice operators are eating it up
What do Hank Aaron, Bill Clinton, Mike Tyson, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla have in common? The tie that binds them is their vegetarian/vegan diet. Our ancestors started eating meat about…
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Food halls on the rise — what they mean to your business
In late 2019, after years of hype and anticipation, Eataly opened its first Canadian operation in Toronto, joining a global empire of 40 stores, encompassing close to 50,000 square feet and…
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