Alberta’s ‘irrational optimists’ face restaurant industry reset

Canmore turns its main street over to foot and bicycle traffic for five months of the year to encourage a laid-back, resort-town experience for diners and shoppers.This view in June 2020 followed the COVID-19 lockdown.

Every dream an independent Alberta restaurateur manages to keep alive helps some neighbourhood stay quirky, vibrant and unique, a UCP member opined in the legislature Monday.

So spend those dine-out dollars in a way that helps maintain the character of your chosen community, Eric Bouchard advised Albertans.

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When an independent restaurant disappears, “it’s not just commerce that’s lost,” said Bouchard, the member for Calgary-Lougheed.

An unofficial landmark also departs — one “that never made it onto a map but most certainly defined a neighbourhood.” Also missing in action is a chunk of local personality.

Supporting local businesses is “about choosing environments where things are a little messy, unscripted and more human,” Bouchard continued.

“It’s about choosing places where the outcome isn’t always guaranteed, where a new dish might fail or succeed wildly.”

His comments came in reaction to a forecast from Dalhousie University that Canada could see 4,000 more restaurants close than open this year. Last year, the net loss was even more pronounced at about 7,000, calculated the Halifax university’s Agri-food Analytics Lab.

Although industry churn is constant, the closure rate has been particularly acute in the aftermath of COVID-19 lockdowns.

Restaurants are running out of resilience and hope in the face of challenges like increased costs and high debt loads, along with diner trends like reduced alcohol consumption and fewer dessert orders, experts from Dalhousie conclude.

Statistics Canada data from 2025 put the number of food service and drinking establishments in Alberta at 12,351.

About a quarter of those were likely small and independent — either they didn’t have employees or the agency couldn’t determine whether they did.

As far as gross sales go, Alberta is a Canadian bright spot.

Sales in restaurants were up 9.5 per cent in January 2026 over the same month in 2025, reaching about $1.15 billion, according to the province’s economic dashboard.

Only Manitoba at 15.2 per cent experienced a higher growth rate, says the dashboard. Across Canada sales were up 4.9 per cent.

But rising costs, higher wages and increased rent keep forcing restaurants and other small businesses to shut their doors, said Bouchard.

“Independent restaurants operate on a kind of irrational optimism,” he said. “The margins are thin, the hours are long and the factors of unpredictability – weather, foot traffic, delivery apps, rising costs, government lockdowns – are almost comically stacked against them.”

George Lee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Macleod Gazette