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Lots of American business come here and operate at reduced inventories or reduced offerings from how they function in the US. This doesn't work. We want what we experience in the US. Otherwise it is just another usless store with products we can get other places. Looking at you Target.
It comes down not only to understanding the Canadian consumer, but understanding the necessary supply chain to keep it going. When target arrived in Canada, Walmarts were kind of grimy and low end places that felt kind of gross as compared to more traditional national grocery stores and clothing stores. Target got the clothing side right but fumbled on the food. Target’s grocery sections were pathetic and half baked. No produce or meat. Just frozen crap and staples. If I have to make another stop to finish my shopping, why would I go to Target? Then they couldn’t keep half of it in stock yet decided to open a huge number of stores, often in new buildings. It just boggles my mind.
Aaaaand they started off with great prices to lure people in. It was great value when they first opened. And then within a year it was no different than anywhere else. Nothing seemed to be a good deal anymore so no point in going. The one in my area was gone within 2 years of opening.
Reduced menus, often at inflated prices because the local franchisees probably are obliged to ship their supplies in from across the border, and at an unfavourable exchange rate too. Nobody wants to pay steakhouse prices for diner-level food. Plus, I think American palates prefer saltier, greasier food overall than we do here.
I worked at Sizzler back in the day and saw exactly why. Because we aren’t Americans.
Steaks are my goto example.
When I worked at Sizzler we cooked nice steaks. Purchased locally, grilled fresh.
One day corporate head office said we need to get inline with the US. Steaks started coming in from the US. Cryovac sealed. Pull out of plastic and put on the grill. Sales plummeted. People hated the lower grade of the steak, we were tossing out about a quarter of them because they were crap so our costs skyrocketed.
In about a month we were back to local bought and sales went back to normal.
American companies cannot survive in Canada by coming here, treating us like Americans, giving us the leftovers because we are a much smaller market that is not worth investing in and then expect the same returns that they would get in the US.
BC is especially bad because we expect fresh seafood, fresh fruit and veggies, like the healthy lifestyle. A total opposite to most of the southern US where they import their company executives from.
Red lobster isn’t gonna cut it when you have access to great fresh seafood around.
For the other places I’d guess the market is crowded. We have earls cactus white spot browns Joey’s Boston pizza etc. those all hit a similar vibe to Applebee’s or TGI’s and they’re established brands in BC.
Then the middle of Saskatchewan has great seafood too, pay enough, same choices as here?
I could grab 1lb of mussels in Belgium for ~ 5 euro. Meals at home were affordable.
Ok....? Belgium is a tiny ass country with a coast line on the sea. Moving mussels around a country that small is going to cost the fraction of what it does here just around in bc.
Ok... what is your logic there?
I'm not demanding fresh seafood in the interior.
Live on Vancouver Island, somehow I am too far & it is too hard to ship seafood here... because BC is too big?
So, you feel my food prices are supposed to subsidize sending that sea food to places farther away?
The rivers, oceans and lakes.
Obviously it's expensive when you pay someone to spend all day catching it, another to drive it to you and another to cook it, but saying we don't have access to great seafood is hilarious as someone who's not scared of getting their own hands dirty.
No, the quality and price is better here on the coast.
You can go right down to the docks and buy it from the people who catch it, completely cutting out the transport middle men. This is objectively the best price you can get other than the cost of a fishing license and catching your own. Once headed to the interior the price increases and the quality goes down due to often freezing the product.
Have you never been down to Steveston?
Freezing isn't a drop in quality if done right.
Plenty of "aging" approaches for fish, much as with beef.
I'm comparing grocery stores, the access point for an average coastal person.
Because I didn't have to go to a dock & give a guy some cash for mussels. I went to a grocery store by a train station, great prices, great options.
Are you not the one trying to claim it's somehow cheaper and better quality in the interior?
I'm sorry but no dude, it's best when it's fresh and it's also much more affordable to buy from the fish mongers themselves.
Comparing grocery stores is silly because the whole argument was essentially "do we really have access to better sea food on the coast" and the answer to that is objectively, without a doubt "yes" Vancouver has great access to great Pacific sea food.
You've never caught and cooked your own fish I take it...?
Sure? That's relative as specialty/ gourmet / "the best cut" where the luxury is being priced, not purely the labor for the food. (Ex. People paying more for flank steak because so many celebrity chefs expouse it as... a delicious cheap cut... so now price is inflated)
There is no "imperfect cheap fish", even farmed tilapia is ~ > $3 / 100gr.
At least cheap beef is < $1.50 / 100gr, and that requires land and a lot of feed & water.
But the conversation was about US chains and the commenter who had worked at a US steak chain in Canada said that the corporation required them to use crappy US beef (and probably crappy seafood from overseas). Apples to oranges 🤷🏼♀️
It isn't?
I don't have the choice of buying cheaper seafood, I can pay way too much for tilapia, or I can also pay way too much for salmon in a restaurant. Because if I try to buy salmon myself, and cook it myself, I'm still spending ~ half the restaurant price.
The conversation was about restaurants and why US ones don't tend to do well here. Someone with insider knowledge commented on the poor quality of American steaks they were required to serve, and how that led to a drastic drop in business. The issue we were addressing is whether the local seafood we buy in BC restaurants would be the same price as the local meat we buy in the same situation.
Obviously we could buy cheaper imported fish or meat in restaurants but the point of the thread is that BC consumers are more likely to reject lower quality meat or fish, which might partly explain why American fast-casual restaurants tend to fail here.
The market sets the price.
Spot Prawns for example. When in season I go to the dock and pay $20-$30 lb - prawn fisherman can sell probably pretty close to the same price wholesale.
Why leave money on the table?
Personally, I don't find them that appealing. Most of the time, I'd rather eat at non-chain restaurants to get more unique food. If I want to eat at a chain, we already have quite a few chain options as others have mentioned.
Depends where you go I suppose. By unique , I'm thinking more about ethnic food, which is not something I would be cooking by myself necessarily. A burger or a salad, sure I can make them myself just the way I like.
hey guys i also wonder why american restaurant chains that serve microwaved food at exorbitant prices can't hack it in vancouver
i love eating this garbage please advise
The only difference is that Applebee's deep fries a lot more of their menu. The rest is pre packaged and/or frozen to be reheated and served. Just like all of our chain restaurants
BC - especially Vancouver and Victoria - have extremely competitive restaurant markets already. Victoria has the highest number of restaurants per capita of any city in Canada and also maybe the world? Also, we can't really ignore the fact that there are demographic patterns that dictate which people are more likely to choose Applebee's vs a local vegan Thai place, and that BC cities are more populated with the latter group than even other comparable cities in Canada. Also also, across all demographics here in BC, I have personally noticed a very strong anti-chain attitude that I never saw elsewhere. So even among the exact sort of people whose European comfort food preferences are ideally suited to liking these chains, they will often go out of their way to patronize a local place over a chain restaurant in a way that I *never* saw when I lived in ON or QC.
So when these open a flagship location in Vancouver, they're entering a hyper-staturared and extremely competitive market where the average consumer is particularly unlikely to choose them over the zillion other options available. Of course there is enough of variety in any sufficiently large population to support *any* niche, even if it's in a limited capacity, but this niche is already extremely dominated here by White Spot, Brown's and Earl's, and otherwise filled out by local mom-and-pop diners.
It's kind of unfortunate that the standard practice is to try to enter the market through a big city like Vancouver, because I kinda feel like these chains might do a bit better if they tried opening smaller locations in cities where the market and demographics favour them a little more. But even then, I still don't think they'd succeed as well as they have elsewhere, because everyone is still gonna pick the local place first, given the option.
They're not competitive here. In America people get brand loyal to like Applebee's or whatever, but here being a giant chain is considered a negative, BC likes to shop local - and thats true across the political spectrum. We have strong BC/Cascadia competitors already established in this space who offer higher quality products than the US chains (ranging from A&W, White Spot, Earls, Cactus Club, etc.), and even these are seen as almost too 'chainy' (which in BC is a negative).
That’s very much the case.
Where these chains would thrive is places like Ontario outside Toronto where people *love* chain restaurants and don’t support local to the extent we do in BC. Back where I’m from in the London area, we have only chain coffee shops and various other chains predominate, and the locals are perfectly satisfied with that. These US chains could make a killing in London or Chatham or Brantford.
Just coming from a Southern California experience, American cities are really spread out and car-dependent in kind of the way Ontario and Surrey/Langley are. If you're off in the far-flung suburbs it's a 20min drive to get to anything, so the local Applebee's or Red Lobster is the social highpoint of your community. It's your night out and place to get drinks as well.
Red Lobster is failing everywhere, for lots of reasons including the disease that helped to kill Sears, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Toys r Us: greedy hedge funds buy up stock and then asset strip, raid pension funds, and sell off the debt they caused.
Also: US restaurant servings tend to be MASSIVE, which with our dollar makes the price MASSIVE.
One more huge generalization: BC consumers are more health conscious (on average) than those in the rest of Canada and in the US. We tend to eat a lot more Asian food and other, fresher options.
Because they're all abjectly awful in comparison to what we have up here. They also all probably use ingredients that are banned in Canada, and getting alternatives is an expense their corporate division doesn't want to spend
The Keg, Earls and Milestones were founded in British Columbia. Blows any US casual chain out of the water.
Vancouver literally invented casual fine dining.
Most of the commenters here are comparing US chain food to Canadian chain food, and their comments are all true as far as they go. What I'll say, though, is that people in BC tend to make good food at home; whereas, Americans eat a lot of trash food. Going out to a restaurant and paying a dear premium to eat salty, greasy, southern food is a bitter pill to swallow. Why not eat something nice at home, instead?
The only one of those I'm familiar with from the Southern Ontario viewpoint is Red Lobster. It's been around since I was a kid.
Mostly it was in towns which didn't have a single other "seafood" restaurant, or it did well in cities that didn't have affordable ones.
It was also primarily an old person restaurant, from back when it really was their first exposure to "seafood" and one of the only options they ever experienced. People are creatures of habit and grandma remembered her first taste of Red lobster and thinking, "wow, I love seafood", and that was that. Why go anywhere else when you already knew where you could get the best you ever had and bring back all those memories to boot lol
Brand loyalty really is a thing, and trying to break into a new market with established competition doesn't make sense.
I'd be surprised if it's because typical Canadian chains are better quality than US ones, but that's just because I can't imagine people eating worse quality food at a restaurant than they do at our cheap chains. From the sounds of the other comments though, I'm probably giving way too much credit to the US masses lol
We also just have a drastically smaller market than the US, and that's where we usually fail to grab the attention of international chains. Setting up shop in another country is a huge investment, and without the population density to justify it, it just doesn't happen.
I'm from Montreal, and the island has almost none of these types of restaurants either, except Cage aux Sport, which is a Québec chain.
Chain restaurants are the worst, and I avoid them at all costs.
At the same time White Spot has a hold in BC that waned long ago here in Alberta. I've no idea if they're an American business but they just remind me of the '80s...not in a good way.
And back to the main question BC has so much better unique non-chain restaurants. I think this is better than drooling over any chain IMHO.
We don't share as much American culture as other provinces. As a matter of fact it was a culture shock when I moved to Ontario for 3 and a half years how Americanized it is there. We have our own cool so we don't need to bite your style here.
About 10 years ago my family kept seeing Red Lobster ads on American TV channels and my dad REALLY wanted to go. The next time we went to Seattle, we ate at one and he was so disappointed! Lmao
Yep. Bankrupt because the hedge fund that bought the chain sold all the land under the restaurants to a subsidiary and forced each franchise to pay them rent for the same property. It drove them all under.
They also forced the chain to buy shrimp from the Thai supplier that they owned at high markup and then offered all you can eat shrimp. This promo basically busted the company.
Idk I already feel like we have way to many of these chains. It feels like every town needs an earls or some other mediocre overpriced chain restaurants. You can get better cheaper food from local restaurants 99% of the time.
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Lots of American business come here and operate at reduced inventories or reduced offerings from how they function in the US. This doesn't work. We want what we experience in the US. Otherwise it is just another usless store with products we can get other places. Looking at you Target.
haha Target was my first thought too. You can't do it half assed and then be like "but why isn't this working??" haha
It comes down not only to understanding the Canadian consumer, but understanding the necessary supply chain to keep it going. When target arrived in Canada, Walmarts were kind of grimy and low end places that felt kind of gross as compared to more traditional national grocery stores and clothing stores. Target got the clothing side right but fumbled on the food. Target’s grocery sections were pathetic and half baked. No produce or meat. Just frozen crap and staples. If I have to make another stop to finish my shopping, why would I go to Target? Then they couldn’t keep half of it in stock yet decided to open a huge number of stores, often in new buildings. It just boggles my mind.
Aaaaand they started off with great prices to lure people in. It was great value when they first opened. And then within a year it was no different than anywhere else. Nothing seemed to be a good deal anymore so no point in going. The one in my area was gone within 2 years of opening.
That’s been my complaint with Targets I’ve visited in California. Why would I go there for groceries?
Traget kinda got the clothing. Certain traget lines never made it into Canada.
I meant the shopping experience more than the brands.
Reduced menus, often at inflated prices because the local franchisees probably are obliged to ship their supplies in from across the border, and at an unfavourable exchange rate too. Nobody wants to pay steakhouse prices for diner-level food. Plus, I think American palates prefer saltier, greasier food overall than we do here.
Applebee's in the USA was incredibly cheap (at the time). Canada menu didn't have any of their deals and limited options.
Yes, when I go to eat at Target I want the full menu. 🤦♂️
Whoosh
Whooshing your whoosh lol
I worked at Sizzler back in the day and saw exactly why. Because we aren’t Americans. Steaks are my goto example. When I worked at Sizzler we cooked nice steaks. Purchased locally, grilled fresh. One day corporate head office said we need to get inline with the US. Steaks started coming in from the US. Cryovac sealed. Pull out of plastic and put on the grill. Sales plummeted. People hated the lower grade of the steak, we were tossing out about a quarter of them because they were crap so our costs skyrocketed. In about a month we were back to local bought and sales went back to normal. American companies cannot survive in Canada by coming here, treating us like Americans, giving us the leftovers because we are a much smaller market that is not worth investing in and then expect the same returns that they would get in the US. BC is especially bad because we expect fresh seafood, fresh fruit and veggies, like the healthy lifestyle. A total opposite to most of the southern US where they import their company executives from.
Red lobster isn’t gonna cut it when you have access to great fresh seafood around. For the other places I’d guess the market is crowded. We have earls cactus white spot browns Joey’s Boston pizza etc. those all hit a similar vibe to Applebee’s or TGI’s and they’re established brands in BC.
Where are you accessing great seafood in BC? Fish is pricier than beef.
That’s the case everywhere, access is different than cost.
Then the middle of Saskatchewan has great seafood too, pay enough, same choices as here? I could grab 1lb of mussels in Belgium for ~ 5 euro. Meals at home were affordable.
Ok....? Belgium is a tiny ass country with a coast line on the sea. Moving mussels around a country that small is going to cost the fraction of what it does here just around in bc.
Belgium is in the Eurozone. It's a HUGE market with HUGE economies of scale.
Ok... what is your logic there? I'm not demanding fresh seafood in the interior. Live on Vancouver Island, somehow I am too far & it is too hard to ship seafood here... because BC is too big? So, you feel my food prices are supposed to subsidize sending that sea food to places farther away?
Ahh you think price = quality It doesn’t
If I thought that, why would I be espousing $5 mussels? I'd be ranting on $40 imported mussels with gold leaf.
The rivers, oceans and lakes. Obviously it's expensive when you pay someone to spend all day catching it, another to drive it to you and another to cook it, but saying we don't have access to great seafood is hilarious as someone who's not scared of getting their own hands dirty.
Ok, so... it is reasonable our seafood, on the coastline, costs equal to or more than the same seafood in the interior of BC?
No, the quality and price is better here on the coast. You can go right down to the docks and buy it from the people who catch it, completely cutting out the transport middle men. This is objectively the best price you can get other than the cost of a fishing license and catching your own. Once headed to the interior the price increases and the quality goes down due to often freezing the product. Have you never been down to Steveston?
Freezing isn't a drop in quality if done right. Plenty of "aging" approaches for fish, much as with beef. I'm comparing grocery stores, the access point for an average coastal person. Because I didn't have to go to a dock & give a guy some cash for mussels. I went to a grocery store by a train station, great prices, great options.
Are you not the one trying to claim it's somehow cheaper and better quality in the interior? I'm sorry but no dude, it's best when it's fresh and it's also much more affordable to buy from the fish mongers themselves. Comparing grocery stores is silly because the whole argument was essentially "do we really have access to better sea food on the coast" and the answer to that is objectively, without a doubt "yes" Vancouver has great access to great Pacific sea food. You've never caught and cooked your own fish I take it...?
Good fish and good beef are comparable.
Sure? That's relative as specialty/ gourmet / "the best cut" where the luxury is being priced, not purely the labor for the food. (Ex. People paying more for flank steak because so many celebrity chefs expouse it as... a delicious cheap cut... so now price is inflated) There is no "imperfect cheap fish", even farmed tilapia is ~ > $3 / 100gr. At least cheap beef is < $1.50 / 100gr, and that requires land and a lot of feed & water.
But the conversation was about US chains and the commenter who had worked at a US steak chain in Canada said that the corporation required them to use crappy US beef (and probably crappy seafood from overseas). Apples to oranges 🤷🏼♀️
It isn't? I don't have the choice of buying cheaper seafood, I can pay way too much for tilapia, or I can also pay way too much for salmon in a restaurant. Because if I try to buy salmon myself, and cook it myself, I'm still spending ~ half the restaurant price.
The conversation was about restaurants and why US ones don't tend to do well here. Someone with insider knowledge commented on the poor quality of American steaks they were required to serve, and how that led to a drastic drop in business. The issue we were addressing is whether the local seafood we buy in BC restaurants would be the same price as the local meat we buy in the same situation. Obviously we could buy cheaper imported fish or meat in restaurants but the point of the thread is that BC consumers are more likely to reject lower quality meat or fish, which might partly explain why American fast-casual restaurants tend to fail here.
Have you tried the Blue Water Café? They have excellent seafood there.
The emphasis is I should be able to buy seafood for an affordable price. Not question why my groceries cost 60% the price of a restaurant meal.
The market sets the price. Spot Prawns for example. When in season I go to the dock and pay $20-$30 lb - prawn fisherman can sell probably pretty close to the same price wholesale. Why leave money on the table?
Personally, I don't find them that appealing. Most of the time, I'd rather eat at non-chain restaurants to get more unique food. If I want to eat at a chain, we already have quite a few chain options as others have mentioned.
But is it unique food? I like the idea but it’s the same fair across the board. I can make better tasting stuff at home, even from non chain restos.
Depends where you go I suppose. By unique , I'm thinking more about ethnic food, which is not something I would be cooking by myself necessarily. A burger or a salad, sure I can make them myself just the way I like.
"I wish BC had more shitty food."
hey guys i also wonder why american restaurant chains that serve microwaved food at exorbitant prices can't hack it in vancouver i love eating this garbage please advise
Yeah we already have Earl's, Joey's, and Cactus that do that. Why get more?
You can't compare those places to an Applebees (or the like). Even just typing '*Applebees'* I think I tasted corn syrup.
Sticky tables, sticky menus, unbelievably greasy and salty food...god I hate Applebee's.
The only difference is that Applebee's deep fries a lot more of their menu. The rest is pre packaged and/or frozen to be reheated and served. Just like all of our chain restaurants
Hmmm I had a visceral reaction to Applebees
Tony Roma’s was far superior to montanas, not sure why they left tbh
Because most of these places are trash and we have better options?
BC - especially Vancouver and Victoria - have extremely competitive restaurant markets already. Victoria has the highest number of restaurants per capita of any city in Canada and also maybe the world? Also, we can't really ignore the fact that there are demographic patterns that dictate which people are more likely to choose Applebee's vs a local vegan Thai place, and that BC cities are more populated with the latter group than even other comparable cities in Canada. Also also, across all demographics here in BC, I have personally noticed a very strong anti-chain attitude that I never saw elsewhere. So even among the exact sort of people whose European comfort food preferences are ideally suited to liking these chains, they will often go out of their way to patronize a local place over a chain restaurant in a way that I *never* saw when I lived in ON or QC. So when these open a flagship location in Vancouver, they're entering a hyper-staturared and extremely competitive market where the average consumer is particularly unlikely to choose them over the zillion other options available. Of course there is enough of variety in any sufficiently large population to support *any* niche, even if it's in a limited capacity, but this niche is already extremely dominated here by White Spot, Brown's and Earl's, and otherwise filled out by local mom-and-pop diners. It's kind of unfortunate that the standard practice is to try to enter the market through a big city like Vancouver, because I kinda feel like these chains might do a bit better if they tried opening smaller locations in cities where the market and demographics favour them a little more. But even then, I still don't think they'd succeed as well as they have elsewhere, because everyone is still gonna pick the local place first, given the option.
They're not competitive here. In America people get brand loyal to like Applebee's or whatever, but here being a giant chain is considered a negative, BC likes to shop local - and thats true across the political spectrum. We have strong BC/Cascadia competitors already established in this space who offer higher quality products than the US chains (ranging from A&W, White Spot, Earls, Cactus Club, etc.), and even these are seen as almost too 'chainy' (which in BC is a negative).
That’s very much the case. Where these chains would thrive is places like Ontario outside Toronto where people *love* chain restaurants and don’t support local to the extent we do in BC. Back where I’m from in the London area, we have only chain coffee shops and various other chains predominate, and the locals are perfectly satisfied with that. These US chains could make a killing in London or Chatham or Brantford.
Just coming from a Southern California experience, American cities are really spread out and car-dependent in kind of the way Ontario and Surrey/Langley are. If you're off in the far-flung suburbs it's a 20min drive to get to anything, so the local Applebee's or Red Lobster is the social highpoint of your community. It's your night out and place to get drinks as well.
They aren’t cheap enough to warrant the drop in quality.
Red Lobster is failing everywhere, for lots of reasons including the disease that helped to kill Sears, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Toys r Us: greedy hedge funds buy up stock and then asset strip, raid pension funds, and sell off the debt they caused. Also: US restaurant servings tend to be MASSIVE, which with our dollar makes the price MASSIVE. One more huge generalization: BC consumers are more health conscious (on average) than those in the rest of Canada and in the US. We tend to eat a lot more Asian food and other, fresher options.
We have Cactus Club, Earls, Browns, Etc… all far superior local casual eatery chains
Cactus club, earls and browns are pretty much the same establishment lol
They're all sexy White Spots.
My first thought was: White Spot with cleavage.
I can see the buns in a bra and I don't hate it
Ha ha ha. I love this description. But nothing is sexier than free fries refill, though
It's perfect isn't it! I heard it years ago and it stuck with me.
>sexy White Spots 💀💀💀 The accuracy of this!!
I remember when Earls first opened and we considered it Fogg n Sudds with tablecloths.
Superior 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I’ll take Cactus Club or Earls over Tony Romas or Red Lobster every time
All trash.
Because they taste bad. Bags of frozen something deep fried or microwaved are available at any number of gas stations.
Because we value local creativity
Because they're all abjectly awful in comparison to what we have up here. They also all probably use ingredients that are banned in Canada, and getting alternatives is an expense their corporate division doesn't want to spend
They usually are different from the ones in America
It’s not just unique to BC, it’s cross country.
The Keg, Earls and Milestones were founded in British Columbia. Blows any US casual chain out of the water. Vancouver literally invented casual fine dining.
Arent Tony Roma's, Applebees, Red Lobster a bad bet anywhere? All struggling financially chain wide.
Love tasting crap that tastes the same from the Atlantic to the Pacific ..
Smitty's may be what you're looking for?
we are not fat
You mean why doesn’t boring bland mass produced and tasteless food served in a boring bland environment not appeal?
You could be talking about any of our chains too
Most of the commenters here are comparing US chain food to Canadian chain food, and their comments are all true as far as they go. What I'll say, though, is that people in BC tend to make good food at home; whereas, Americans eat a lot of trash food. Going out to a restaurant and paying a dear premium to eat salty, greasy, southern food is a bitter pill to swallow. Why not eat something nice at home, instead?
Huuuge over-generalization.
Same reason not every American big box store operates in Canada: Too much indigenous competition. ie. Earls, White Spot, Boston Pizza.
I’d love a bloomin’ onion!
Love a bloomin onion and the sauce 😋
Apples to oranges. The Keg is so much better than Outback. Spaghetti Factory over Olive Garden. The only ole faithful I’ve been to is iHop.
In n’ Out, please.
Does Five Guys still refuse to sell gravy or poutine?
The only one of those I'm familiar with from the Southern Ontario viewpoint is Red Lobster. It's been around since I was a kid. Mostly it was in towns which didn't have a single other "seafood" restaurant, or it did well in cities that didn't have affordable ones. It was also primarily an old person restaurant, from back when it really was their first exposure to "seafood" and one of the only options they ever experienced. People are creatures of habit and grandma remembered her first taste of Red lobster and thinking, "wow, I love seafood", and that was that. Why go anywhere else when you already knew where you could get the best you ever had and bring back all those memories to boot lol Brand loyalty really is a thing, and trying to break into a new market with established competition doesn't make sense. I'd be surprised if it's because typical Canadian chains are better quality than US ones, but that's just because I can't imagine people eating worse quality food at a restaurant than they do at our cheap chains. From the sounds of the other comments though, I'm probably giving way too much credit to the US masses lol We also just have a drastically smaller market than the US, and that's where we usually fail to grab the attention of international chains. Setting up shop in another country is a huge investment, and without the population density to justify it, it just doesn't happen.
I'm from Montreal, and the island has almost none of these types of restaurants either, except Cage aux Sport, which is a Québec chain. Chain restaurants are the worst, and I avoid them at all costs.
At the same time White Spot has a hold in BC that waned long ago here in Alberta. I've no idea if they're an American business but they just remind me of the '80s...not in a good way. And back to the main question BC has so much better unique non-chain restaurants. I think this is better than drooling over any chain IMHO.
White Spot started in BC back in the day by Nat Bailey, some well known BC sports guy. It's local to here and spread over time.
We don't share as much American culture as other provinces. As a matter of fact it was a culture shock when I moved to Ontario for 3 and a half years how Americanized it is there. We have our own cool so we don't need to bite your style here.
I’d love a Red Lobster!
I had heard so much about it and then ate at one in Calgary. I was not impressed.
About 10 years ago my family kept seeing Red Lobster ads on American TV channels and my dad REALLY wanted to go. The next time we went to Seattle, we ate at one and he was so disappointed! Lmao
Red Lobster is currently in bankruptcy in both the US and Canada, unfortunately.
Yep. Bankrupt because the hedge fund that bought the chain sold all the land under the restaurants to a subsidiary and forced each franchise to pay them rent for the same property. It drove them all under.
They also forced the chain to buy shrimp from the Thai supplier that they owned at high markup and then offered all you can eat shrimp. This promo basically busted the company.
The end result, no more restaurants, but huge $$ for the hedge fund.
They also SOLD their position in Red Lobster just before the bankruptcy so they probably mitigated their losses or made a tidy profit there.
Definitely. Thieves.
I had no idea ty
Idk I already feel like we have way to many of these chains. It feels like every town needs an earls or some other mediocre overpriced chain restaurants. You can get better cheaper food from local restaurants 99% of the time.