Nearly one in five restaurants has been wiped off the menu in Quebec since the pandemic, or more than 3,800 out of 22,730. In the past year alone, more than 839 restaurateurs have hung up their aprons, stuck by closures, the lack of employees and the explosion of food prices. The newspaper went to meet them.
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“I have a desperate restaurateur who just called me saying he had $200,000 in the bank before the pandemic and he’s stuck with $500,000 in debt because he didn’t have right to federal assistance,” says Olivier Bourbeau, Vice-President, Federal Affairs and Quebec, of Restaurants Canada.
This story is far from being an isolated case. The last days, The newspaper spoke to many restaurant owners in shock. See the portraits below.
Cascade of closures
After two years of the pandemic, 2,428 full-service restaurants, 669 limited-service, 540 special catering and 29 bars have closed, for a total of 3,666, according to the Association Restauration Québec (ARQ).
A figure that could reach 3,800, according to Restaurants Canada, which notes that across the country, 13,000 addresses disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Sanitary measures, labor shortages, food prices… restaurant owners have had to face many headwinds.
“The breathlessness of the owners may come from the fact that the price of food increased by 6.3%, this is not a detail, compared to 5.2% for all goods, from February 2020 to February 2022 », Analyzes Jöelle Noreau, senior economist at Desjardins Group.
“Many work with gas kitchens. However, we have seen increases in energy prices,” she adds.
For Jean Lagueux, professor of urban and tourism studies at UQAM, restaurateurs must control their market costs.
“We train a cook to cook. We do not train a cook to manage, ”explains the member of the Quebec Association for Training in Catering, Tourism and Hospitality.
“Perhaps studies in four or five years will tell us that those who closed had business models that were not adapted to their reality,” he says.
At the ARQ, its vice-president, Martin Vézina, retorts on the contrary that “it is not the market which dictated the operating conditions, it is the government which imposed health restrictions”.