Toronto-based private investment firms Osmington Inc. and Harlo Entertainment Inc. announced plans Wednesday to bring the U.S. fast food giant to Canada.
The New York-based fast food brand that started out of a hotdog cart in Madison Square Park in 2001 and now has 440 locations worldwide has been eyeing Canada for “quite some time,” said the company’s chief global licensing officer, Michael Kark, in a statement.
Many Canadians have travelled to international locations and others visited a one-day pop-up the company held in 2017 at the now defunct Momofuku Daishō in Toronto.
“People have an expectation and they don’t want to be disappointed if it comes here and it doesn’t translate that way,” she said. “They want it to be the same experience.”
That experience will be in the hands of Osmington and Harlo, who Kark has called “exceptional” partners for the company’s expansion.
Osmington, which is owned and controlled by Thomson Reuters chairman David Thomson, was involved with the Atlanta Thrashers’ relocation to Winnipeg and the retail redevelopment of Toronto’s Union Station, while Harlo is behind restaurants such as Mimi Chinese, Kasa Moto and Planta.
“Their emphasis on community building, enlightened hospitality and exceptional food quality aligns with our values and we are thrilled to be bringing them to Canada.”
Five Guys, Carl’s Jr., Wahlburgers and Blaze Pizza all flocked to Canada before Chick-fil-A and Dave’s Hot Chicken headed north in recent years.
Hutcheson feels these brands were drawn to Canada because the markets and interest levels in fast food are similar.
“We love our fast food here,” said Vince Sgabellone, a food service industry analyst at Circana, the amalgamation of research firms Information Resources Inc. and NPD Group.
“We love our quick service food here and we love to eat out at restaurants, so there’s still lots of room, I think, for expansion and new concepts and new brands to come to Canada.”
Canada’s newest U.S. fast food entrants leaned heavily on chicken, a category that has increased in popularity as some consumers become more health-conscious and shift their diets away from red meat.
Chicken sandwiches were included in 7.3 percent of all restaurant orders in Canada in 2020, data released by research firm NPD Group found. That amounted to 386.4 million servings.
Some 17.6 million BBQ chicken sandwiches were ordered in Canada in 2020, up 40 percent from the year before, while 228 million breaded chicken sandwiches were gobbled up, down three percent from the year before.
Canadian companies have coped with the onslaught of American counterparts by expanding their own fast-food offerings. Several added chicken sandwiches and all-day breakfast menus, while Tim Hortons partnered with pop superstar Justin Bieber to launch three new Timbit flavours—called Timbiebs—and experimented with flatbread pizza.
“It‘ll make the established players sit up and take notice and they’ll be on their toes right now,” he said.
Statistics Canada’s latest data shows the price of food purchased from fast food and takeout restaurants in February was up 8.6 percent compared with a year ago.
Visits to fast food joints in Canada were up nine percent in 2022, just shy of the 11 percent gain they saw in 2021, NPD Group research shows.