Abstract
COVID-19 continues to impose a series of unique challenges on the food retail and food service sectors in Canada. In May 2020, the expectation was that the public health crisis shutdowns of the restaurant sector would be temporary. Although we may still be in a much longer temporary than was originally envisaged, it is becoming clearer that permanent restructuring may also have happened. Grocery stores have solidified their changed realities through an increased focus on multiple channel retailing rather than a complete choice between either bricks and mortar or online. Increased costs, resulting from the pandemic, are continuing to filter through the food system and we have a growing problem with food security for some Canadians given that employment in January 2021 was found to be at its lowest level since August 2020. Unemployment moves directly with lockdowns that are varied across the country.
1 INTRODUCTION
The impacts of the COVID-19 virus on the food retailing and food service sectors in Canada continue to evolve with longer term implications remaining somewhat uncertain. The impacts remain in two major categories: The first being the actual impacts of public health on individuals, on employees in food retail and food service, and on individuals throughout the rest of the supply chain. The second is the dramatic change in what form and where people want to buy their food. However, circumstances are changing since vaccination will allow Canadian society to return to some level of “normality,” although the timeline for that remains somewhat uncertain and whether normality will ever look like 2019 or before remains unclear.
