It may seem like a lifetime ago given all the tariff talk, but we just got the final month of data on restaurant and bar sales in 2024.

It was not a strong finish for the sector in Alberta. After falling by 0.8% in November, sales* in the province were flat in December despite the federal GST tax break that began halfway through the month.

Compared to December 2023, sales were only 0.2% higher—the smallest increase of any province.

The trend was somewhat stronger at the national level with sales rising in each of the last five months of the year.

Compared to the previous December, national sales were 3.6% higher.

Stepping back from the monthly data to look at the annual picture, sales in Alberta increased by 3.1% in 2024 to $12.4 billion. The slower growth, however, did come after a 12.1% jump in annual sales in 2023.

Taking into account population growth (as of July 1), sales per Albertan were down in 2024 by about 1.2% while national sales per capita posted growth of 0.9%.

It is important to note that per capita restaurant and bar sales in Alberta were the second highest of any province last year at $2,536. British Columbia had the highest per capita sales in 2024 at $2,941.

As a sector, Alberta’s restaurants and bars will, like the rest of the economy, be bracing for the potential impact of tariffs which could affect everything from food prices to consumer confidence. At the same time, the weak Canadian dollar is expected to keep more Canadians at home and encourage more Americans to travel to Canada, both of which would help support spending at restaurants and bars.

*The monthly sales data have been adjusted for regular seasonal variation. The data are preliminary and may be revised. These revisions could be large so we will be watching for this in future editions of The Twenty-Four.

Answer to the previous trivia question: A high school economics teacher played by Ben Stein references the Smoot–Hawley Tariff in the 1986 film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (though he uses the alternative Hawley-Smoot phrasing).

Today’s trivia question: Which author said “The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?”