A dinner for two at a good independent restaurant in Vancouver in 2024 — not a tasting menu, not a special occasion, just a proper restaurant meal with wine — will cost somewhere between $140 and $200 before the tip. This is approximately forty percent more than the same meal cost in 2020. Most people are aware of this. Most have an opinion about it. Almost no one is doing the math on why.
The why is not complicated. Labour costs in BC have increased substantially since 2021. The minimum wage has gone up. The cost of experienced kitchen staff — sous chefs, line cooks with more than two years of experience — has gone up more than the minimum wage because the labour market for people who are good at cooking is competitive in a way a wage floor does not fully capture. A kitchen paying its senior line cook $22 an hour in 2020 is paying $30 to $34 in 2024 if it wants to keep them. These people should be paid more. The math runs through to the price of the food.
Food costs have not cooperated. Supply chain disruptions that were supposed to be temporary have not fully resolved. The cost of proteins — particularly seafood, which is a significant category in Vancouver — has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. The cost of specialty ingredients, locally sourced produce, and the premium products that distinguish a restaurant from a cafeteria has increased in a way that is not reversible in the short term.
Rent in a city experiencing a housing crisis has not decreased. A restaurant paying $8,000 a month for a 1,500-square-foot space in 2019 is paying $11,000 to $14,000 today. This is money that has to come from somewhere, and in a restaurant the only place it comes from is the price of what you eat.
The outrage is understandable. When your dinner bill crosses a threshold that used to mean special occasion and is now just Thursday, something has changed about the relationship between what a restaurant is and what it costs to use one. The neighbourhood place you go twice a month without thinking about it has become something you have to think about. This is a real loss.
But the math does not care about the loss. The restaurants charging what seem like unreasonable prices are, in the majority of cases, charging what they need to charge to stay open. The ones that tried to hold the line have largely closed. The ones still open are the ones that made the calculation that their customers would rather pay more than not have the restaurant.
What this means practically is a bifurcation of the market. At the high end, the increase feels less dramatic because the starting point was already elevated. At the low end there is a crisis — the affordable neighbourhood place, the lunch spot, the family restaurant that ran on volume and tight margins. What is thriving is the middle that has found a reason to exist beyond price alone.
The restaurants worth spending the money on are the ones where the food justifies the cost on its own terms. That distinction is still real. Finding those restaurants is the work of being a serious eater in this city right now.
