Restaurant price inflation has been outpacing grocery inflation for months, a sign that business owners continue to grapple with higher costs, said Restaurants Canada.
“When we started to see these initial inflationary pressures start to creep in, restaurateurs were a little nervous to start passing on those increases in costs to the guests,” said Kelly Higginson, president and CEO of Restaurants Canada.
More and more, restaurants have been “pushed to the brink,” leaving owners no choice, she said.
Grocery inflation continued to slow in March, rising just 1.9 per cent compared with a year earlier, Statistics Canada reported on Tuesday. That’s down from February’s annual rate of 2.4 per cent and a far cry from the peak of grocery inflation at 11.4 per cent in late 2022 and early 2023.
However, prices for food purchased from restaurants rose 5.1 per cent from a year earlier, the same rate as in …