Vancouver Magazine
The Broadway/Cambie Corridor Has Become a Hub for Excellent Chinese Restaurants
Flaky, Fluffy and Freaking Delicious: Vancouver’s Top Fry Bread and Bannock
Care to travel the world, one plate at time? Visit Kamloops.
Protected: The Wick is Lit for This Fraser Valley Winery
Wine Collab of the Week: The Best Bottle to Welcome a Vancouver Spring
Naked Malt Blended Malt Scotch Whisky Celebrates Versatility and Spirit
5 Ways We Can (Seriously) Fix Vancouver’s Real Estate Market
Single Mom Finds A Pathway to a New Career
5 Things to Do in Vancouver This Week (March 20-26)
What It’s Like to Get Lost on a Run With a Pro Trail Runner
8 Things to Do in Abbotsford (Even If It’s Pouring Rain)
Explore the Rockies by Rail with Rocky Mountaineer
The Future of Beauty: How One Medical Aesthetics Clinic is Changing the Game
4 Fashion Designers From African Fashion Week Vancouver to Put on Your Radar
Before Hibernation Season Ends: A Round-Up of the Coziest Shopping Picks
We add up the cost of takeout containers, delivery fees, PPE, and other necessities putting a financial strain on restaurants.
“This January, we’ll have been in the business for 14 years,” says Robbie Kane, owner of Café Medina. The always-busy spot originally opened in 2008, but COVID-19 saw it transition from brunch hub to online store in a matter of weeks. (It’s open for reservations now). “It was a huge, huge learning curve,” emphasizes Kane. “We went from serving 400 people a day to walking into an empty room and taking an order for three lemons, two potatoes and a side of hummus—it was a kick in the gut.” But while everyone knows it’s been tough, no one seems to be laying out the actual nuts and bolts of the extra costs restaurants took on to serve fewer people. So we sat down with Kane to take a look at his keeping-afloat-in-COVID price list.
Approximately $3 for a party of two people ordering brunch.
Uber Eats is an extra 20 percent of the total bill (as per government mandate; it was 23 percent before). For an average order of $50, we are giving up $10.
Fees have remained the same (average: 2.75 percent), but almost no one pays with cash anymore, so that cost has increased. If we’re using Shopify to sell in-house groceries, that’s 5 percent of sales. For Stripe, which we use to process Tock (Tock also takes 10 percent of any sales over and above a monthly fee and independent of Stripe), that’s 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction. (Credit cards are on top of that.) Paypal takes 10 percent for gift card orders.
Tock’s reservation service is $250 per month. Ritual’s takeout service is 13 percent of sales.
Mailchimp Hosting for our new newsletter costs $79 U.S. per month.
Masks are $50 per week. Gloves went from $12 per box of 100 to $22 very quickly (and we likely doubled our glove usage during this time). Hand sanitizer is $25 per litre. Acrylic shielding cost $10,000. Cleaning supplies and labour are… a lot.
This is sadly a temporary patio in Medina’s case. Cost: $10,000, not including labour time.
All in all, Kane is grateful that Medina was able to keep its doors open. “I think, at the end of the day, what I’m most proud of is how the entire industry has come together to support each other,” he says—through the pandemic, Kane and his peers shared information about subsidies and how to overcome industry-specific challenges. “There have been lots of chats, group conversations and Zoom calls—the industry is really rising up and meeting the challenge together.”