When Grizzly Bar opens next week in Toronto, guests will have no question about where its users ‘ affiliations lie in the trade conflict between Canada and the U. S. Maple foliage and mechanical bears will set the mood. Customers will be able to get Montreal smoked beef, crab from the Maritimes or Caesars topped with sauce chips in small papers boats. They can all be paid for by income, cards or the country’s various favorite money, Canadian Tire income. For entertainment, Blue Rodeo, Rush and Loverboy will be on heavy rotation and a” Hoser Olympics” will see customers face off in a series of challenges like the “loonie toss”, “hockey tape escape” and” sorry-not-sorry” Canadian apology competition. ” It’s going to be crazy how much stuff that is”, said co-owner Jessica Langer Kapalka, who also plans to clothing the pub manager in a nine-foot, inflated grizzly bear costume and set up tents offering a campfire-like encounter with s’mores. Grizzly Bar’s in-your-face strategy is one of the way American restaurants are responding to the tax tensions that have engulfed North America and threatened to destroy foods provide chains and dining out budgets. As U. S. President Donald Trump continues to anger his country’s closest alliance with tasks on everything from cars to home shelf staples, American restaurants have swapped U. S. ingredients for home ones. Some have revamped recipes, ditching the Philly steak and replacing Grande with Canadianos, while others are holding up on U. S. development programs. 1: 39
In politically charged business, Canadians still chasing the best dealThe varying approaches reflect the fact that every creation has had to find its own way to balance its American satisfaction with the preferences of its client base and the realities of pricing pressures, said Jo-Ann McArthur, president at Toronto advertising agency Nourish Food Marketing. ” You don’t have to go all the way to changing your decor and changing your entire menu”, she said. ” It’s about supporting your local producers where you can”.Yet some, like James McInnes, are keen to take the issue even further. His vegan fast-food chain Odd Burger Corp. paused its plan to open 60 franchises in the U. S. just two weeks after announcing the expansion in March. McInnes made the decision because he feared “escalating political tensions” had made the economics of the plan too much for his London, Ont. based business to stomach. ” Not only are the tariff percentages changing on a daily basis, but also what is getting tariffed is changing on a regular basis”, McInnes explained. ” How do you formulate pricing for franchisees when you don’t know what many of the costs will be” ?Rather than get caught up in the confusion, Odd Burger decided to stay focused on its Canadian operations and think more closely about what it can do to insulate its supply chain from the U. S.” If there’s a 200 per cent tariff put on Coke, we don’t know what that will look like”, he said. ” We’re exposing ourselves to a lot of risk and at a certain point, it just doesn’t make financial sense to carry U. S. products “.At Kanoo Coffee, it was patriotism rather than prices that got co-owner Steve Neville to make its menu unabashedly Canadian. When the Guelph, Ont., café opened last year, the plan was to bring customers a taste of the world’s best coffees, so it cycled through international brews until the tariff spat convinced Neville to make Canadian coffee the star. Trending Now
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” We realized it’s been a no-brainer all along”, he said. 1: 17
Whitby residents rally behind Canadian owned businessesKanoo’s offerings now come from Subtext Coffee Roasters in Toronto, September Coffee Co. in Ottawa, Phil &, Sebastian in Calgary and Traffic Coffee Co. in Montreal. ” Being in this globalized world, we’ve kind of lost sight of some of those domestic priorities ( like ) supporting local businesses, local families … and that’s starting to break down”, Neville said. ” So that’s kind of like the silver lining to all this “.Grizzly Bar is similarly proud it will be able to put the spotlight on Canada. The company found the fixings for menu highlights like poutine, chicken wings and bison burgers at home. ” I was expecting it to be a lot more difficult in some ways to source the majority of our food items from Canada, but it hasn’t been that difficult at all”, Langer Kapalka said, In the few cases when something can’t be sourced from Canada, the business turns to allies. That’s why New Zealand elk and Mexican fruit and vegetables make the menu and the animatronic bears come from the Philippines. Asked how much she and Jason Kapalka, her business and life partner, spent on the endeavour, she said, “wish I knew”! The couple’s budget is up to$ 15, 000 but they reduced expenses by getting friends to scour “wood-panelled basements” for eccentric decor they could borrow. All of the preparations happened in the last few weeks after the couple settled on transforming Offworld Bar, a dining establishment they run that rotates through different themes, into a Canadian paradise. The beach style pop-up Grizzly Bar will supplant lasted about two months. The Canadian theme will likely stick around longer. Kapalka jokes about running it until 2028, when the U. S. will elect its next president, but hopes the political tide will render it unnecessary even sooner. ” Hopefully, there’ll be a different regime at some stage there”, he said. ” I would look forward to switching it off, if there’s no longer a need for it”.
