By Dillon Collins
The late great legendary chef and author Anthony Bourdain once said “Food is everything we are.” A realist, Anthony also was quoted as saying, “If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.” If ever two things could be simultaneously true. Just ask celebrated local chef and restauranteur Todd Perrin who has seen his share of success and struggle after decades of navigating the turbulent world of gastronomy.
“We’re not at it to make a ton of money. We’re at it to have a life. We’re at it for a lifestyle that we enjoy. We love being in a restaurant. We like being around restaurant people. We need to make a living, but we’re not taking our money and building a house in the mountains of Switzerland. We take in $1 million or we spend $1 million. That’s how this business works. And most of us are happy with that,” Todd begins during a one-on-one at Rabble, the St. John’s eatery of which he is co-owner and executive chef.
Secretary/Treasurer and Food & Beverage Sector Representative for Hospitality Newfoundland and Labrador, Todd began his culinary career in the early 90s. He’s seen the ebbs and flows of Newfoundland and Labrador’s culinary landscape over the decades, and as such he’s in a position of authority to declare that we’re in the midst of tumultuous times in the industry.
At this writing, five local restaurants have closed their doors or announced their intention to do so in relative quick succession: Pi Gourmet Eatery, Bad Bones Ramen, Chinched Restaurant and Deli, The Nook and Cannery, and Curry Delight. All carrying various reasons for closing shop ranging from inflation, increased costs of living, mounting debts brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and the usual hill-to-climb that comes from embarking on a career in restaurant ownership.
Yes, closures are an inevitability of the business. Data collected from Restaurants Canada in 2024 shares that 62% of restaurants operated at a loss or barely break even, with bankruptcies at a staggering 44%, the highest totals in a decade. Yet the fact remains that the closure of five notable eateries in quick succession paints a worrying picture of the state of the industry at large. As Todd puts it “I guess sometimes being loved isn’t enough.”
For the world-class chef behind Rabble, Waterwest Kitchen & Meats and Mallard Cottage – a veteran of television with high-profile appearances on Top Chef Canada and Wall of Chefs – and many of his contemporaries, shifts in patron mentalities, largely brought on by changing habits during the pandemic, have created lasting damage that pushed many proprietors too far into the red.
“The biggest thing, I think, is the way people interact with restaurants has completely changed. People don’t go out as much and when they go out they have slightly different expectations than they used to have before …They want more for less when all of our costs went up,” Todd admits. “They all renovated their kitchens during COVID, they all became better cooks during COVID and there’s SkipTheDishes and DoorDash and all that stuff. That’s for the convenience of the customers and not there for the success of the restaurant.”
The boom in online or mobile delivery services like SkipTheDishes, DoorDash and Uber Eats has taken a bite out of the mom-and-pop businesses or those that rely heavily on the night out experience, where service and time to savour have been replaced by click-of-a-button convenience and speed.
“It took a lane out of the restaurant industry,” Todd says of the rise in online ordering. “There’s always going to be room for the big box restaurants, the places you take the kids for birthday parties, the fried chicken places. There’s always going to be room for the quick ramen place down the street, the fast-serve delivery pizza. There’s always going to be room for all that, but what happened is that I think COVID very specifically targeted, inadvertently, a swath of the restaurant industry which is experiential. I always say, we’re not in the food business, we’re in the people business. Food is the tool that we use, but we’re about coming out, having the music, having the seating, it’s about being together with people. And when people have a different attitude about how that works then that’s a hard thing to overcome.”
As both a proprietor and representative for the community at large, Todd aims to spotlight how these closures come at a very human cost.
“I think that what happens is that a lot of times people look at restaurant closures and look at the restaurant industry being challenging and go, well, they weren’t very good or they didn’t know what they were doing or they were poor business people or whatever. But what I think people should appreciate more is that someone really cared about doing that and someone had a lot of passion and love for doing that and it just didn’t work. They couldn’t get it to work for whatever reason,” Todd expresses, adding with cool intensity, “There are restaurants in this town that are their oven breaking down from going out of business. That’s the reality.”
At the mercy of suppliers, patron reviews, rising cost in prices – and perhaps more starkly in Newfoundland and Labrador than anywhere else in Canada, the weather – restaurants run a highwire act of juggling plates in search of perfection on a nightly basis. From the music and ambiance to the approach and speed of service to the quality of the food on the plate, everything must work in concert for a restaurant to operate as a proper ecosystem. And that’s not even beginning to account for real-world factors.
“I think what I’m hoping to do and have been trying to do for years is just try to get people to appreciate what goes on in these small businesses, which runs counter to the mantra of most restaurants,” Todd explains. “Our goal is that you don’t know how hard everyone is working. You’re supposed to come here and sit here and relax and enjoy it. You have no idea what is going on behind that kitchen door or what is going on in the staffroom in the back. It could be going sideways. I mean, I’ve served people lunch while we’ve had a chimney fire.”
They say that in the restaurant business, the money runs out long before the passion. It’s a constant fight between a glass half full or half empty, with those in the business walking the risk-reward ratio of boom or bust. That passion, more often than not, is needed to carry the day.
“For Jen and I, a happy team, happy crew, happy customers, bills are paid, I’m good. That’s all we ever strive for. My reward is getting to come here every day,” Todd says, circling back to the recent closures as a parable for the community at large. “I think what we have to kind of reckon as a community is that, with the last four or five closures, I know most of those people personally. That’s 150 years of restaurant experience in this community that basically, at least for the time being, is not in the industry. I know those people and I know their ages and I know a lot of their circumstances. And I don’t know that they’re all going to go open another restaurant. And there’s not a lineup of people coming behind these people to do it, for lots of reasons and lots of good ones.”
At a definitive crossroads on the future of the dining experience, Todd aims to speak for the collective as those in the business seek to stay afloat amidst the post-holiday dry spell. Continued patronage, whether a glass of wine here, a takeout order there, or desserts between friends, could be the difference between a successful Monday or final Sunday in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately medium.
“We don’t necessarily need you to come out and spend $300 every Friday night, but the little things. Popping in for a glass of wine and a snack, supporting the people. Think of it as calling your mom, right? Very few of us call our mother enough. We take her for granted that she’s always going to be there, and then one day she’s not. This is kind of what’s happening in the restaurant industry. People take for granted that, well, okay, and fair enough. Todd Perrin closes his restaurant down the street, well, someone’s going to come along and open up another one. You know, that’s what people think, and for many, many years that was true. What I would say is that’s not going to happen anymore,” Todd shares, urging diners to be conscientious with their choices.
“We want people to understand that it’s a very difficult business that got a lot harder. And we know that most of you when you come out and support our businesses and support the industry, have a really good time. But just like you’re picky about what you spend your money on for other things, you don’t want your small local crafter to go out of business, then you go buy their mug or you go buy their piece of art. If you want your restaurant to be there next Friday, then you should try to go there.”
In the short term – reflecting firmly on the big picture – the Todd Perrins of the world continue to grind, make, shape and serve, driven by an indefinable passion and love for feeding the masses that will weather most any storm.
“I wouldn’t trade the last 30 years of my career for anything,” Todd closes with a smile. “As tough as it’s been, and it has been tough, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”