Canada's Restaurants Are Getting Costlier & Prices Are Expected 'To Go Up Significantly'

With food prices in Canada on the rise, an expert revealed that you should also expect to be paying way more at restaurants soon.

Sylvain Charlebois, a professor and director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, told Narcity that the country is experiencing "the highest hike" in the year-to-year prices of food right now when it comes to actual dollar amounts.

For restaurants and other food service establishments, prices have gone up more than 3% this year and Charlebois said he's expecting "menu prices to go up significantly over the next little while."

Not only is it getting more costly to eat at restaurants but it's also getting more expensive to buy food at the grocery store. Fresh and frozen meat prices have gone up along with edible fats and oils, butter and eggs.

"The difference between 2021 and other years is that in 2021 we actually had two wild cards: climate change and COVID," Charlebois said.

According to Canada's Food Price Report 2021 released by Charlebois' lab in December 2020, it was forecasted that there would be a general inflation rate of 5% this year, which would cause the average family of four to pay $700 more for the same amount of food they bought last year.

He told Narcity that the lab is "comfortable" with that forecast so far in 2021.