By Dr. Maurice Yeates, Stephanie Dizonno and Dr. Tony Hernandez

In this CSCA Research Insight, we focus on the burgeoning food services industry in Canada - an industry that grew at twice the rate of population growth between 2015-2019. The industry is comprised of six sub-sectors of activities, with full-service and limited-service eating places accounting for 90% of all food service business establishments in Canada. Using data from our quarterly-released national CSCA Maior Food Service (MFS) Chain Database we analyze the corporate and location structure of limited-service eating places across Canada. We find that the limited-service eating places sub-sector is largely a chain­based and franchised sub-sector with 75% of the establishments operating as part of a chain and an estimated 90% franchised. It is highly concentrated with the top 5 US-owned conglomerates controlling over 50% of all the establishments in the sub-sector. By contrast, the 78 Canadian-owned conglomerates controlled just over one-third of all the establishments.