After the announcement was made on Tuesday, April 6, that the province will be moving back into Step 1 of reopening, you may be wondering when restaurants will close in Alberta.  While restaurants haven't been ordered to close down, they have been ordered to stop indoor-dining services and move to take-out, curbside pickup, delivery, and patio service.

MTY Food Group Inc. MTY-Treported a first-quarter profit of $13.4 million, down from $19.0 million a year ago, as it continued to deal with the impact of the pandemic. The restaurant franchising company says the profit amounted to 54 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Feb. 28, down from 76 cents per diluted share a year earlier.

We can’t just let the small businesses close down and let no one have access to them, but let the big box stores still sell certain items,' said shopper at Walmart On Thursday morning, a provincewide stay-at-home order went into effect, which, among other things, limits retail stores - including big box stores - to selling only essential items such as groceries, pharmacy items, and health care items.

The store's Proudly Indigenous section showcases wines and spirits from Indigenous-owned companies across Western Canada.  New businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today, the StarPhoenix talks to Jason Allen and Cam Werezak, part of the team that operates The Patch Wine & Spirits, which opened in December south of Saskatoon in the Grasswood area.

Dollarama Inc. DOL-T says the Rossy family, which founded the company, is selling a total of 2.2 million shares in the discount retailer. The company says GRI Investments Inc., a private corporation controlled by the Rossy family, the Rossy Foundation and chief executive Neil Rossy are selling 618,369, 1,205,066 and 376,565 Dollarama shares respectively in block trades to a financial institution.

The red ink keeps flowing at The Beer Store. The retailer, majority owned by Molson Coors and Labatt, had an operating loss of $50.7 million in 2020, as competition from grocery stores and restaurant bottle shops grew, and keg sales were crushed by COVID-19 restrictions. That loss, which the retailer revealed in its recently-released annual financial statement, was up from a $46.5-million operating loss in 2019 and an $18.1-million loss in 2018.

Alberta intends to offer vaccines to about 2,000 meat-packing employees at their worksite this month as part of an effort to target citizens most at risk of contracting the coronavirus and who might otherwise struggle to access or accept shots. A mass vaccination clinic for employees at Cargill Ltd.’s High River operation, which was the site of the largest workplace outbreak of COVID-19 in Canada, is scheduled to start around April 20, according to one of the doctors leading the project.

As soon as Chris Christodoulou heard on March 19 that he could open the patio of his restaurant, Soulas Modern Greek Cuisine on Toronto’s Danforth Avenue, he got to work. There was cleaning and setting up the tables and chairs; buying inventory, including new beer kegs; and recalling staff who had been laid off.

A predominantly maskless crowd gathered outside the Family Kitchen Restaurant in Leamington Tuesday to support the owner's decision to remain open for inside dining despite a government-ordered lockdown.  A predominantly maskless crowd gathered outside the Family Kitchen Restaurant in Leamington Tuesday to support the owner's decision to remain open for inside dining despite a government-ordered lockdown.

Montreal's latest food trend isn't just finger-licking good - it's helping keep restaurateurs afloat during tumultuous pandemic times. Spurred by necessity and need, local chefs have chosen inventive ways to fill the fried chicken void created by the lack of popular U.S. chains here. Colonel Sanders is a Montreal fixture, but a boom of fast-food chicken brands, from Chick-fil-A to Popeyes, has completely sidestepped the city.

A Moose Jaw restaurant has closed its doors to indoor dining until April 14 as coronavirus variants continue to rise in the area.  Brandon Richardson, who owns Deja Vu, said he's taking a proactive approach to help reduce the spread of the virus.  "We decided we needed to step up and it was a very hard decision because you need cash flow in order to keep running," Richardson said.

Ottawa restaurateurs, who were prohibited late last week from opening their patios as part of the province’s “emergency brake” on the spread of COVID-19, have felt all the more penalized after seeing people congregating en masse last weekend in public places and at big-box stores. The weekend’s balmy weather, which is expected to continue through this week, drew crowds, in particular, to the ByWard Market and to the queues outside high-capacity stores.

Though restaurant owners and operators of hair salons and gyms were bracing for bad news Thursday, the news they will be closed for at least four weeks during a provincewide COVID-19 shutdown still hit hard. Reporters Norman De Bono and Dan Brown caught up with three business owners as they digested the latest curveball thrown against them during the pandemic.