WinterDine returns in Charlottetown as food festivals across Canada try to boost slow season

WinterDine, a fixed-price food festival that runs for three weeks in P.E.I. aims to give restaurants a boost during slow season. Maria Sarrouh with more.

At Slaymaker & Nichols in downtown Charlottetown, the glasses are polished, tables wiped, and lights turned on, but seats don’t fill as easily this time of year.

It’s partly why the restaurant is participating in WinterDine, a fixed-price food festival that runs for three weeks in P.E.I.’s capital. Across Canada, similar dining promotions launch in late January, aimed at giving restaurants a boost during what is typically the slowest stretch. They’re helping solve what some businesses say is their number one problem right now.

“Historically, the biggest issue we had was probably around cost or around staffing maybe,” said Steve Murphy, who co-owns the restaurant and a couple of others on the Island. “But now our biggest challenge is getting people out of the house.”

Like other restaurants in the city’s core, Slaymaker & Nichols is busy on Friday nights. But Murphy said it’s “fairly quiet” around lunchtime and particularly on weekdays.

He says that’s compounded by the Island’s off-season reality: fewer visitors and a smaller local customer base to lean on, including an aging population and many snowbirds who head south.

Tourism PEI estimates the Island welcomed 1.71 million non-resident visitors in 2024, a summer surge Murphy says restaurants and staff gear up for each year before demand drops off in the colder months.

“There’s a lot of restaurants and not enough people to go around,” he said.

Another shift he’s noticing is that more people are staying home, not just in Charlottetown but across North America, as budgets tighten and more diners become better home cooks.

“Times are tight. It’s hard to afford to go out, and that’s a challenge,” Murphy said. “We can try to plate something that we make money out of, that provides a good value to you, something you can’t make at home.”

WinterDine is organized by Downtown Charlottetown Inc., and CEO Dawn Alan said the non-profit is always looking across the country for ideas that can help businesses during “shoulder seasons.”

“We call it R&D in our world, rip off and duplicate, which we do proudly, and they share proudly,” Alan said with a laugh.

She said it’s been 21 years since the festival first launched, beginning with two weekends, before it expanded into today’s three full weeks.

“People really, in January and in the first week of February, kind of cocooned a little bit. Getting off your couch after you get home from work through the week, in order to go out and have a meal, wasn’t really heard of,” she said.

Now, Alan said restaurants often book up quickly, and diners who wait too long sometimes struggle to find a table.

“It drives traffic but also confirms bookings early on for the restaurants,” she said.

This year’s WinterDine features three-course dinner menus priced at $45 or $55, along with Frost Bites, a two-course lunch program priced at $15 at select locations. It runs until Feb. 8.

The festival also plays up friendly competition, inviting diners to vote for their favourite menus for a chance to win a $25 or $100 gift card.

Alan said some restaurants have been known to go above and beyond, accommodating late bookings by offering the WinterDine meal even after the event wraps.

“It’s the Island way.”