'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
When a fried chicken chain opened its first location in Atlantic Canada, it was so popular it had to cut back hours.
The Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen that opened a few weeks ago in a Halifax suburb has reduced its schedule because of high demand that left staff scrambling as customers queued up for hours.
"Due to industry-wide staffing challenges, the store is open for one less hour than before," Popeyes spokeswoman Emily Ciantra said in an email.
"The restaurant aims to be back to its regular hours by early June."
The bizarre case of a restaurant so popular it needs to close early underscores a pervasive issue facing restaurants in Canada: A labour crunch.
"The new Popeyes that opened actually had to ... cut back hours just to give their people a rest," said Gordon Stewart, executive director at the Restaurant Association of Nova Scotia.
Restaurants across the country are reducing hours and condensing menus as persistent staff shortages and spiking costs threaten to derail the industry's comeback from crushing pandemic restrictions.
The decision by many restaurants to scale back operations comes despite an upswing in business as diners return to restaurants in full force.
"Customers are back. But when you don't have staff to work all the shifts, you start cutting back hours," said Stewart.
"There are very few restaurants now that are running seven days a week and full hours."
Canada's restaurant industry was slammed by two years of shutdowns, repeated layoffs and strict capacity limits. About 13,000 eateries across the country closed permanently.
The situation prompted an exodus of workers from the sector as people sought more steady incomes, switched fields or went back to school. Canada also welcomed fewer immigrants during the pandemic, newcomers that sometimes find work in the restaurant industry.
Compounding the issue now is Canada's rock-bottom unemployment rate, which Statistics Canada said hit 5.2 per cent in April.
As the lucrative patio season ramps up, the restaurant industry expects staff vacancies will rise to 210,000 across the country by this summer, said Olivier Bourbeau, vice-president of federal affairs with Restaurants Canada.
"It's extremely difficult for restaurants to find staff," he said. "We just don't have enough workers."
Job openings abound across the industry in both fast food and full-service restaurants.
But the problem is most acute in kitchens.
"Red seal chefs, sous-chefs, line cooks -- that's where the shortage is really hurting restaurants," Stewart said.
During the pandemic some restaurant operators blamed government subsidies for the lack of staff, but the ongoing shortage suggests a more protracted and complex issue. Some workers in the industry have said the long hours, unstable schedules, low wages and gruelling conditions -- especially in a hot, busy kitchen -- are to blame.
Meanwhile, restaurants are also facing spiralling costs.
Statistics Canada reported the annual inflation rate hit 6.7 per cent in March, while food costs -- a key input for restaurants -- increased even more, with prices for dairy, pasta, meat and cooking oil all soaring.
"From gasoline to a steak, it's all gone crazy," Stewart said. "Costs are up right across the board."
Some eateries are eliminating less profitable meals like breakfast or lunch, offering fewer menu items overall and closing during the slowest days of the week to cut down on waste. Others are offering smaller portion sizes, rethinking the so-called "centre of plate," typically beef, chicken or fish, or even just ordering less food at one time.
"If you don't sell something by its (expiry date) it's gone, you have to throw it out," Stewart said.
"So they're ordering less. They're watching the inventory, controlling it, watching the plate size and designing smaller tighter menus."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2022.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Rookie goalie Arturs Silovs will start in net for the Canucks as Vancouver kicks off a second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers Wednesday night.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.