The Charcoal Group is investing between $25 million and $30 million to open five new Ontario restaurants, pushing ahead with its expansion plans despite economic uncertainty and the growing challenges of bringing new locations online.

The company — which also opened new restaurants during COVID — is working on Ontario openings for Peterborough, Richmond Hill, two locations in St. Catharines and one in Burlington.

And for the Kitchener, Ont.-based firm, one of the most difficult tasks is navigating the laborious process of securing municipal approvals.

“Trying to get site-plan amendments and slight variances and just your building permits, and working with landlords on their permits for landlords’ work, it is an incredible process that is only getting more and more arduous with each passing year,” Jody Palubiski, chief executive officer with The Charcoal Group said to FoodNX in an interview.

Lessons learned from the pandemic

While today restaurants are facing a litany of problems, such as rising food costs and labour shortages, it was the experience during the pandemic that really helped The Charcoal Group inform its future growth plans.

“A lot of times, these things have left the station two or three years before, and so you have no choice but to keep chugging. It’s not as if six months ago we said, ‘Hey, let’s open five new restaurants.’ That said, we’re all excited, and those restaurants that we did open during COVID have all done very well and continued to grow,” he said.

“It’s a little bit of a lesson for us in that even the challenges of the day, while they create obstacles and potentially some uncertainty, through consistent execution and focus, you can overcome those things and stay focused.”

The original Charcoal Steakhouse just celebrated its 70-year anniversary from its humble beginnings as a 42-seat restaurant in 1956.

“But it was probably the creation of Beertown during back in 2012 when the first one opened, that started to make us think a little bit further afield. We’ve now opened 12 of those, in I believe nine different regions throughout Ontario, and they’ve all been very successful.”

Beertowns generally run around 5,000 to 6,000 square feet, he added.

The firm also operates Wildcraft Grill + Long Bar, Martini’s Bar and Patio, Dels Italian Kitchen, The Bauer Kitchen, The Bauer Bakery and Cafe, Kitchen + Tavern, Solé Uptown Restaurant and The Moose.

Following the opening of the new locations, the company will have reached 25 total restaurants, all in Ontario.

The process of opening new restaurants

Finding new areas to open locations involves a careful look at the potential markets and how its restaurants can fit in and succeed, Palubiski explained.

“We have enough restaurants now where we can look at what has worked for us, what’s successful, and quite often we might go to a new location and say, ‘Well, this is very much like the Cambridge location, or this is very much like the Waterloo location.’ As far as traffic counts, lunch traffic; it might be the number of hotels close by, it might be the amount of retail, or the amount of commercial, or manufacturing,” Palubiski said.

As it has grown and brought on new employees, The Charcoal Group is at a point where “we have enough people to understand where the competitive set lies and how competitors are doing in certain markets, and so that plays into it,” he said.

Besides the challenges of exploring new areas for growth, the firm and industry are facing a “laundry list” of areas of concern, he said.

“It’s inflation, and there’s the question mark around consumer confidence and tariffs and how that’s affecting different communities in different ways.”

Eyes on the future

While it is paying attention to all of those areas, Charcoal Group remains hopeful for the future and how it can manage those headwinds.

“It’s finding that happy medium between not obsessing; staying positive, staying focused and optimistic on your business but being prepared to react and have a plan, and so we’re hyper-aware.”

The company hopes by choosing strong markets, it will be well-prepared to weather many of these storms.

“We want you to come in, disconnect from the news, reconnect with your family, your friends, and so we still believe that at any given time — we’re in markets generally with populations over 100,000 people — that there’s going to be a few hundred people every single day that are looking for that kind of experience, and we’re going to be the best at it,” Palubiski said.