Fish and chips franchise planning Kitchener location amid COVID-19
Five restaurants are waiting out construction delays, including one on Highland Road West
KITCHENER — In the storm of COVID-19, one Ontario restaurant franchise is continuing to cast its lines in the water.
Halibut House, a chain of fish and chips restaurants launched in 2001 about 80 kilometres northeast of Toronto in Port Perry, is working to open seven new Ontario locations — including in Kitchener — amid the outbreak of COVID-19.
There are currently 26 Halibut House restaurants across the province, largely confined to the Greater Toronto Area. Expansion will see new locations pop up as far as Kingston and Ottawa.
In 19 years in business, not one store has been forced to close. It’s a record the company is hoping to continue, and that goes for the locations that haven’t even opened yet.
“We were in a peculiar situation because we had different restaurants at different stages when this started in March,” said Vince Kang, whose mother, Julie, opened the first restaurant in Port Perry.
Five of the seven new restaurants — one in Kitchener on Highland Road West — are waiting out construction delays to begin offering the trademark fish and chips meals. Restaurants in Brantford, Lindsay, Markham and Ottawa also find themselves in this boat.
Orangeville and Kingston sites, both set to open next week, were originally slated to open in March. But once they got wind of the potential pandemic blowback, Kang said they opted to delay both launches.
Now, he said they’ve reached the point of no return and must open. Rent payments are coming, and the sites need to start generating revenue to stay afloat.
For locations such as Kitchener, construction was expected to be well underway in March, with the restaurant to open the following month. Now, it’s a wait-and-see approach as the province begins its reopening in phases.
To help assist franchisees, Kang said they’ve removed royalties and advertising fees, while working with Restaurants Canada and their provincial and federal counterparts to try to come up with actionable plans to relieve the burden on the restaurant industry.
Restaurants Canada reports more than 800,000 food-service workers have been laid off or have had their hours cut down to zero amid the outbreak of COVID-19. And if conditions don’t improve over the next few months, it announced one out of every two independent restaurants does not expect to survive.