High inflation impacted Canadian chain restaurant performance in 2022: Technomic

High consumer prices for food service played a big role in boosting Canadian chain restaurant sales growth and limited-service Mexican and chicken chains achieved strong sales and location growth in 2022, a new report from Technomic explains.

Technomic’s 2023 Top 200 Canadian Chain Restaurant Report looks at how the top Canadian restaurant chains fared amid unprecedented levels of food-service inflation in 2022. The report includes expert findings and insights and provides a detailed analysis of the food-service industry trends, annual sales and unit counts by chain and segment.

“Total sales for Canada’s Top 200 chain restaurants hit $40 billion in 2022, improving by 15 per cent compared to the prior year,” said Kevin Schimpf, director of industry research and insights at Technomic.

“While overall chain restaurant sales managed to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, the recovery was largely driven by rising menu prices and the top-heavy growth of the industry’s top-ranked players.”

Key findings include:

• Total Top 200 chain sales accounted for over half of all Canadian restaurant and bar industry sales in 2022.
• The Top 200’s location footprint includes more than 27,000 restaurants, and has grown each of the last two years following a pandemic-related contraction in 2020.
• Historically high consumer prices for food service played a major role in boosting chain restaurant sales growth.
• Limited-service Mexican and chicken chains achieved standout sales and location growth in 2022.

The report is available at technomic.com.