Sit down for a meal at restaurants around the world right now, and your table could feature anything from shower curtains pulled round your party at an Ohio cafe to clear plastic sneeze guards separating diners in restaurants from Hong Kong to Rome.
In a field in Sweden, you’ll find a basket-and-pulley setup rigged to ferry food to a table for one, provided you book well in advance.
Around the world, restaurant owners are coming up with their own ways to do business in the midst of a pandemic that’s thrown their industry on its head.
But with restrictions still in place across Canada, some restaurateurs say the reopening reality closer to home is likely to look more familiar — just with diners a lot farther apart — as restaurants focus capital on simply keeping the lights on.
“How it’s going to look? It’s going to look empty,” said Tony Siwicki, owner of Silver Heights Restaurant in Winnipeg and interim chairperson for the Manitoba Restaurant and Foods Association.
“It’s going to be very spacious. It’s going to be comical. People are going to be laughing at this scenario — but they’re going to understand.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the restaurant industry hard. Statistics Canada says the accommodation and food services sector shrank by almost a quarter in March and dropped again by nearly 10 per cent in April. Across sectors, some of the hardest hit have been small businesses.
“We could see anywhere from 10 to 30 per cent of restaurants simply disappear,” said James Rilett, vice-president of the central Canada region with Restaurants Canada.
“When we look at independent restaurants, about 50 per cent of them had doubts whether they’d be able to reopen.”
Some restaurant patios are open now, in keeping with rules under the province’s plan to reopen the economy. Indoor dining rooms can’t open until June 1 at the earliest, but that date and the rules surrounding it remain subject to change.
Despite the uncertainty, Siwicki said he wouldn’t be surprised to see creative solutions emerge locally.
“There’s really not too much out there yet,” he said. “But I think, June 1, you’re going to see a lot of new ways [and asking,] ‘Why didn’t I think about that?'”
Spaced-out dining rooms, more staff cleaning
Rilett is skeptical about seeing widespread use in Canada of changes like tableside sneeze guards or extra walls, because those interventions cost money and space, he said.
Instead, he said diners should expect to see different table layouts when they return to their favourite spots — and the floorplan of individual dining rooms could have a big impact on how those restaurants bounce back.
Manitoba guidelines indicate restaurants will have to cut back dining room occupancy by 50 per cent. But requirements for physical distancing between everyone inside the building could limit occupancy even further, Rilett said.
“Even if I do have a lot of floor space, if that’s long and thin, by the time you get a corridor for staff and patrons to walk through it might take out more than half your tables,” he said.
Stepped-up requirements for sanitation may also mean you’ll see more staff in roles like hosting, Siwicki said.
Where a restaurant may have had one host seating people and wiping tables and menus down between guests, they may now need two or three, he said. He’s expecting to see more staff involved in explaining sanitation processes to customers, too.
“There’s going to be a lot of labour going out, just to make sure that that’s happening properly,” he said.
‘So much uncertainty’
In small restaurants, Rilett says the rules may hit harder. The same size constraints that previously created a feeling of coziness and intimacy or a friendly hustle-and-bustle could work against restaurants during a pandemic.
“A lot of our original concept was high-quality food, in a very intimate dinner environment,” said Cam Chabot, co-owner of Winnipeg’s Close Co. The restaurant on Stafford Street has a footprint of fewer than 400 square feet.
“That is not what people will be looking for in the near future, and nor do we want to put anyone in that position.”
After closing its dining room, Close Co. adapted by pivoting to offer takeout. Now, Chabot and other owners are trying to figure out if they can afford to stay where they are in the face of unchanging overhead obligations and reduced capacity.
“There’s so much uncertainty there. The easy thing to do would be to shut down,” he said.
“We’re still in the feeling-out phase of whether this is even viable. And I know for a lot of restaurants, it’s just not going to be.”
Lucien Joyal, general manager and co-owner of The Oxbow Natural Wine Bar and Restaurant in Winnipeg, said he’s expecting to see a heightened awareness from diners about how close they are to each other and staff.
The South Osborne restaurant closed in March ahead of provincial orders. Summer months there are usually slower, Joyal said, since they don’t have a patio. Owners are expecting not to reopen until late summer or fall.
“I think what we’re definitely expecting to see is … a shift in the diners’ consciousness, in terms of how they perceive things like distance between tables or distance between you and your server,” he said.
“The way they see things like, you know, hand-washing and, you know, use of shared bathrooms and even things like menus.… A lot of places are going to switch to using laminated menus or using paper menus that are disposed of after each use.”
‘All we can do is adapt’
There’s no timeline for when the pandemic, or any impact it has on public habits, will fade. As the economy reopens, Rilett said Manitoba may be well-served by what he sees as a relatively stronger culture of supporting local.
“If anything positive comes out of this, if it’s a better link between the producer and the restaurants, then that’d definitely be a good thing.”
At the local level, Joyal said he sees resilience and creativity in the industry around him.
“Small restaurants and small businesses pride themselves on their adaptability. That really is kind of the name of the game,” he said.
“It’s difficult for us to speculate on how people’s perception and how people’s awareness is going to change over time. So from our end, all we can do is adapt as we go.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
