The Easter weekend is generally very lucrative for restaurateurs, however, this year, the phenomenon of “no-shows” came to spoil the party.
This is particularly the case at the Café de la Gare in Rosemère, in the Laurentians. The small restaurant, which has only 37 seats, was full. However, many people canceled within 24 hours or did not show up.
“We are considering setting up a deposit system. It is certain that for a small place, what is the most complicated is the management aspect of all that because obviously [on n’a] not many staff […] The major issue is [si] the customers are ready. I think we are moving more and more towards that, but it is certain that we have a lot of reluctance,” underlined Audrey Medaino-Tardif, owner of Café de la Gare.
For the owners, these are many losses since in addition to having to order more food, they have to refuse customers. We must also keep in mind that Easter is “one of the good weekends for restaurants,” according to Martin Vézina, vice-president of public and government affairs at Association Restauration Québec.
“This year, we surveyed our members in the last week, 15% told us that they were full [et] almost half told us that it was still an important celebration, that it still brought a lot of traffic,” he explained.