Restaurant profits being eaten up
From family gatherings to afterwork snacks to everything in between, everyone has a fond restaurant memory or a local spot they depend upon to feed and comfort them. Don't take them for granted, though, because unique, local dining experiences are caught between the frying pan and the fire.
The chef of world-famous Noma in Amsterdam told The New York Times that the modern fine-dining model that he helped create is “unsustainable.”
“Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn't work,” René Redzepi said in the Jan. 9 article, announcing he was closing the three-time Michelin Star-winning restaurant and turning it into a full-time food laboratory by the end of 2024.
With a multi-course menu that costs diners at least $500 a person, Noma's economies are not those of an average, local Atlantic Canadian eatery. The pressures on the dining industry, however, are global.
Restaurants Canada said in an October 2022 news release that the food service industry shares three huge challenges since COVID-19 brought its own trials — mass labour shortages, inflation and supply shortages.
Closer to home, the owner of two Halifax restaurants, Julep and Hermitage, blamed these challenges for forcing him to shut down his businesses in a Jan. 21 social media post.
“Due to skyrocketing costs, food inflation, COVID shutdowns and debts incurred over the past three years, it has become impossible to operate sustainably,” Lawrence Deneau wrote on Instagram.
He added, “As a small business owner, it is very difficult to pour your entire being into a project and have no choice but to give it up.”
Other restaurants around the region are limiting or changing menus, reluctantly raising prices or choosing to stay closed certain days of the week.
As a diner, it can be frustrating to find your favourite item stricken from the menu, or containing less meat than the last time you ate there. It's annoying to find the eatery is closed for lunch, or only open on Fridays and Saturdays, when you were hoping to pop in during a work break.
Think how much worse it would be, though, if your usual dining haunt were closed for good. What if all restaurants closed?
Not only would it impact people's daily lives, such a scenario would certainly change the tourism, seafood and agriculture industries that are the lifeblood of Atlantic Canada.
While we acknowledge dining out is not something a lot of people can enjoy most of the time, gathering for food and drinks with friends is very much woven right into our social fabric. Local restaurants also provide local jobs, buy local ingredients and help stock local soup kitchens.
That restaurants could reach a best-before date is certainly food for thought.