Expanding Your Restaurant to More Locations in Canada

Your original location is humming. The line's out the door on weekends, your team is dialled in, and regulars know the menu better than the POS. Naturally, you start thinking: Is it time for a second, third, or even tenth location?

Expanding in Canada right now is both a bold move and a careful numbers game. Canada's food service sector expected to grow at an impressive 17.5% CAGR from 2025 to 2030 and reach $303.7 billion by 2030, signalling healthy demand and strong opportunities for investment. At the same time, more than half of restaurants are operating at a loss or just breaking even, as higher food, labour, and occupancy costs squeeze margins.

In other words, there is room to grow, but only with a clear strategy, strong sites, and systems that scale. This guide walks Canadian restaurant owners, GMs, operations leaders, and CFOs through how to expand to more locations with confidence..

Are You Really Ready to Add a New Location?

Before you go scouting storefronts in Toronto, Calgary, or Halifax, step back and stress-test your current operation.

Start with customer analysis. Are guests coming back regularly? Are there dishes people travel for? Use your POS data to see repeat visit rate, top 10 menu items by profit (not just popularity), and daypart performance by weekday versus weekend. Next, consider site and service modelling. Could your concept work as a smaller urban unit, a suburban family-focused layout, or even a kiosk or food hall stall?

Cash flow and reserve matter enormously. Healthy expansion usually means strong, stable cash flow at the original site, a realistic break-even timeline for the new location, and runway to absorb six to twelve months of slower-than-hoped sales. Finally, conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). Formalise what makes your current restaurant work and what keeps you up at night, then ask honestly: Would those weaknesses be amplified across multiple sites?

Choosing the Right Locations in Canada

Your expansion lives or dies on site selection. There are three pillars that apply directly to Canadian operators.

Know Your Target Guests and Where They Actually Are

Use a mix of Statistics Canada data to understand income levels, population density, and spending in potential neighbourhoods. Local municipal dashboards (many large cities publish open data on demographics and foot traffic) can provide valuable insights. Your own POS holds treasure too: postal codes from online orders, delivery hotspots, and loyalty signups. If you're a high-energy bar and grill, a downtown entertainment district might be ideal. If your concept is family-forward with larger formats, a suburban power centre with strong parking access may be the better bet.

Calgary is sizzling hot in the Canadian restaurant scene, with the highest growth in restaurant spending of any major Canadian market. Over the past five years, Calgary's spending on dining out has grown 7.5% annually, with Calgarians spending a hearty 44% of their food budget on dining out. Markets like this deserve serious consideration when planning expansion.

Analyse Foot Traffic, Visibility, and Competition

Consider foot traffic by daypart (lunch versus dinner, weekday versus weekend), sightlines from key streets or transit stops, and competitors. Are there too many similar concepts, or is the area under-served for what you offer? 

In Toronto, for example, operators opening second or third locations often target neighbourhoods with overlapping audiences but distinct micro-vibes. Think moving from downtown core into areas like Leslieville, Liberty Village, or midtown, using a concentric circle strategy.

Learn From Success Stories

Glowbal Restaurant Group is a great example of what smart, intentional growth can look like in Canada. The Vancouver-based group now operating eight restaurant brands and employing more than 1,100 people has been expanding its footprint without losing the signature hospitality that made it a local favourite. Recently, Glowbal took two of its flagship concepts, Black+Blue Steakhouse and Riley’s Fish & Steak, to Toronto, signalling a strategic move from West Coast success to a true national presence.

What makes their approach useful for operators planning expansion is how deliberately they grow. They don’t just clone one idea across cities. Instead, they scale a portfolio of distinct concepts — steakhouse, Italian, seafood lounge — all tied together by a strong hospitality ethos. It’s a reminder that expansion works best when every new location has a clear purpose, not just a duplicated menu.

Legal and Regulatory Checklist for New Locations

This section is not legal advice. Always confirm specifics with local regulators and consider consulting a lawyer or licensing specialist before committing to a lease. When you expand into a new municipality or province, you'll typically need to consider several regulatory areas.

Zoning and Land Use

Check that the property is zoned for food services and drinking places (or equivalent category) with your municipal planning or zoning office. Some cities restrict patio noise and hours, late-night service, or drive-thru or takeout-specific operations. City websites (such as Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary) maintain zoning maps and business licence guides tailored to restaurants.

Business Licences and Registrations

You'll usually need a municipal business licence for each location, provincial registration or extra-provincial registration if you operate across provinces, and a CRA business number and any required payroll accounts. Many provinces maintain small business portals. For example, Ontario's business licence and permits portal aggregates restaurant-related requirements by municipality.

Health, Food Safety, and Inspections

Provincial and territorial health authorities regulate food premises. Examples include Public Health Ontario, Vancouver Coastal Health, Alberta Health Services, and equivalents in other provinces. You'll need approved kitchen layout and equipment, food safety certifications for key staff, and regular inspections and compliance with provincial Food Premises Regulations. Health Canada provides overarching food safety guidance, while provincial regulations spell out temperature control, storage, and sanitation requirements.

Liquor Licensing

Liquor is regulated at the provincial level. AGCO in Ontario, BC Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch (LCRB), Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux (RACJ) in Québec, and AGLC in Alberta each have rules on hours of service, happy hour and discounting, server training, and entertainment (live music, dancing). If your expansion model includes different formats (such as a quick-service satellite with no bar and a full-service flagship with a large liquor program), expect different licences and conditions at each site.

Employment Standards and Payroll

With more locations, you're operating under provincial employment standards acts (wages, hours, overtime, breaks) and federal tax rules. Minimum wages differ by province and can change annually. Tipping, pooling, and tip-out rules can have province-specific nuances. Your HR and finance teams should build a compliance checklist for each province you operate in.

Build an Operating System That Scales

Expansion can absolutely work, but only if every new location is designed to be more efficient than the last. That means smaller footprints with more covers per square foot, better table turns (Gusto's 30% improvement is a benchmark to aim for), and labour scheduled using POS data, not just gut feel.

Multi-location restaurants don't just replicate menus, they replicate systems. The Voice of the Canadian Restaurant Industry 2025 report shows 69% of Canadian restaurants expect to increase technology spend over the next year, with top tech priorities including accessing sales and financial data and managing multiple locations effectively. 

That's exactly the challenge Toast is built around: helping operators run multiple sites in one connected ecosystem. If you're planning to expand your restaurant to more locations in Canada, Toast can act as the backbone of your growth. We offer a single platform for orders, payments, online ordering, and multi-location reporting, handhelds and KDS.

Marketing and Brand Building Across Locations

More locations mean more moving pieces, but also more opportunities to build a recognisable brand. Use a blend of local launch campaigns (soft openings with neighbouring businesses and media, collaborations with local creators or community groups), national brand consistency (shared visual identity for signage, menus, and website, unified social handles or clearly connected location pages), and tech-enabled retention (centralised loyalty across all locations, email and SMS campaigns segmented by city or province).

Canadian diners are also heavy social media users when it comes to restaurant discovery and inspiration, as shown in Toast's Content Consumption Survey. Sharing high-quality images and short-form video from each new site on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts keeps your expansion story visible and memorable.

A Step-By-Step Checklist for Your Next Location

1. First, validate readiness (strong financials and cash flow at current site, clear, data-backed understanding of your core guests). 

2. Second, refine your concept for scale (decide whether the next site is a clone, a smaller spin-off, or a new format like kiosk, ghost kitchen, or bar-heavy). 

3. Third, choose your region and neighbourhood (use StatsCan, local data, and on-the-ground visits, map competitors and complementary businesses). 

4. Fourth, confirm zoning and licensing feasibility (zoning, health, liquor, and business permits). 

5. Fifth, build your site and service model (floor plan, seating capacity, and kitchen layout). 

6. Sixth, standardise your tech stack (POS, handhelds, KDS, online ordering, loyalty, and reporting). 

7. Seventh, finalise menu and pricing (align with Pollfish insights on pricing models and menu preferences). 

8. Eighth, hire and train your opening team (use learnings from your original site to shape onboarding). 

9. Ninth, plan your launch marketing (local PR, social content, partnerships, loyalty offers). 

10. Tenth, monitor and optimise (weekly reporting on covers, labour percentage, prime cost, and guest feedback).

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Expanding your restaurant across Canada is one of the most exciting chapters you'll write as an operator. It's a chance to bring your concept to new communities, build a stronger team, and create a business that scales sustainably. The opportunity is real. Canada's foodservice sector is expected to reach $303.7 billion by 2030, and the restaurants that grow smartest will be the ones that lead their markets.

Whether you’re opening location number two or taking a big leap to number ten, the fundamentals don’t change: understand your guests, run a tight and efficient operation, deliver real value every day, and use data to steer your decisions. That’s how you grow with intention — and build a brand that lasts.

If you're ready to explore how Toast can support your multi-location growth, we're here to help you build something lasting.