When you react to self-imposed sanctions by instituting self-imposed sanctions, what did anyone think was going to happen? Patronizing Mary Brown’s Chicken in order to stick it to those American chains just got more expensive. If anything, this lunacy just points out how brittle the Canadian economy really is.
The fryers, which cost up to $27,000 each are made of steel and shipped from the U.S. Because Canada’s counter-tariffs include cooking appliances made of steel, Cluck Clucks believes it will now pay 25 per cent more for each new purchase.
He adds that Canada doesn’t manufacture deep fryers, so he can’t solve the problem by switching to a domestic supplier.
You can lockdown stupid, you can tax it, you can tariff it, you can polish it like a turd, but you can’t fix it.
#TurdholeDominion
Remove the six or so Ontario car plants, and Canada really doesn’t manufacture anything! And those car plants would prefer to move to southern USA or Mexico.
Consider at one time Canada/Ontario manufactured diesel locomotives, fire trucks, International Harvester trucks, Libby’s foods, Campbell’s foods, Loging equipment, busses, and had the supporting industries. These are items I am familiar with – you may know of more, they are all gone.
40 years ago in London Ontario GM built wheeled armoured vehicles for the Canadian Military – and tried to sell to other countries with some success. You can still see them in service, or in a parade. There is no facility now in Canada to build this type of equipment.
So the tariffs matter to lots of industries, because Canada no longer has the infrastructure/plants internally to build – essentially anything.
Exception might be items that are built manufactured in the west for oil and gas industry.
$10 or $20 thousand on a $ million store? Cry me a river.
You’ve not run a business, have you?
Clearly, he hasn’t. Obviously, if opening a business meant instant success, he’d have done it long ago.
Managed my first business starting in 1978. Self employed since 1987.
That’ll show the American’s, we’ll tariff our own citizens for what? So we can f@ck our citizens. Now they can raise the price of their chicken to pay for the extra cost.
I’d like a journalist to ask, why is it not economically viable to manufacture stainless steel deep fryers in Canada? Is it the generally high level of taxation? Is it the near overwhelming array of rules and regulations?
Is it of such a level of expertise that it’s simply beyond the mental capacity of people educated by unionized teachers in Canada?
Having briefly looked, Quest Metal Works manufactures these in Vancouver and Winnipeg.
Why do eastern based chicken outlets not buy their equipment from western based manufacturing companies?
How much do they cost?
How good are they?
How’s the service support?
How many can they make in a month?
What’s their delivery timeline?
Who else has one that I can go and see?
How much training do I need to do for staff if I switch to this new guy?
Mary Brown’s Chicken has a lot of locations. Is that manufacturing company able (and willing) to support them and every other guy in Canada that needs a fryer?
These are the kind of questions I’d be asking if I owned a Mary Brown’s Chicken franchise. The answers are probably going to boil down to “it’s cheaper and better to buy the American one, even at 25% tax increase.”
Since 1938 apparently, I doubt “additional training” is required, it is after all, deep frying chicken parts and after all, most of us saw President Donald Trump working the fries machines last October 2024.
The machines have a gas inlet, any Red Seal gas fitter (like me) could connect it in under 10 minutes + an additional 20 minutes talking with folks there for an even 1 hour of billable labor… 14 locations and multiple dealers across Canada, (used to be Russell Food Services, a well known company) I’d expect delivery timeline to be 2 months (less time than to build a new outlet) though they say they have some available for immediate delivery as well, prices start at $5200. each, and they’re lined up as long as you’d like them to be, for example, 5 in a row is $26k
Typically they’ll be side by side and as stated on the post above, they may be $27k each as there are a few of them on the go at any one time, but it isn’t a 10′ long continuous oil bath, they’re all separate, and have separate fire suppression built on top of them as well as an interlock device to shut the gas off when the fire suppression engages. It’s a CSA gas code and fire code requirement.
https://www.questmetal.russellhendrix.com/about-us/history/
Thank you for your educated reply – I used to be a commercial interior designer. I moved to Toronto in 1977 and started working for a company which designed discotheques, hotels and restaurants. The first 5 years were an intense learning experience. I learned to do kitchen schedules which spec’d the equipment and their point of connection (size of electrical, water connections/drains and gas hook-ups).
By the early 1990’s, it cost at least $ 500,000 to open a restaurant just in conforming to building permit requirements, construction and outfitting of the kitchen equipment and the furniture. On top of that, another $ 200,000 was required for stocking in the food/liquor and training/paying staff until the restaurant had paid off its’ ‘Nut’. This was for a minimum 100 seat restaurant doing 2 turns at lunch and 3 turns at dinner.
Thanks, Marc. That was informative. I might need a commercial stove someday, I’ll look into this a little.
If these fryers are built in Western canada, folk from eastern canada will not consider buying them. They will import even at a higher cost. That is the quality of folk in eastern canada.
I know that Vancouver is a bit of a hillbilly outpost of civilization and it has more than its fair share of Karl Marx types. But I suspect that Quest has internet access,and most of those questions could be answered by letting some fingers do the walking. Actually, they look rather professional from my little jaunt there.Oh look.. They have dealers in every southern province in the country and 4 in Ontario.
*Russell Hendricx foodservice supplies, last time I was in Vancouver working, I’d driven by Quest 30 times in that month, and taken a photo of the corner. They have a cool looking stainless steel clock on the corner view of the store on 1200 block Venables St and Clark Drive which is visible from google cam if you’re truly geeky.
A couple of blocks from Strathmore Park which was formerly a drug and homeless haven. I’d heard they dug the topsoil out when they cleaned it out, down to about 3 feet deep from all the toxins those folks had left to soak into the ground.
It is the fact that Canada is a corrupt, CCP-run kleptocratic narco-dealing sh””hole. It didn’t used to be. But it is now. Who in their right mind wants to risk starting a business, especially a new, risky venture, in that dump? Between greasing Liberal Party palms to keep the CCP bosses happy, the unions, natives, Quebec mafia and the woke mob? Thanks, we’ll pass.
My own survey (sample population of 1!!) a couple of years ago during an afternoon running errands revealed the extent of Canadian manufacturing. Muffin tin: made in China; shoelaces: made in China; hatchet (do we have trees in Canada??): made in China.
How did we manage to produce these and hundreds of thousands of other items up until 30 years ago??? Total dereliction by politicians and big business leaders jumping on the globalization bandwagon.
But not to worry, we’re going to keep the hi tech jobs….except Canadian students can’t get these because our universities are stuffed with enrichers!!
“He adds that Canada doesn’t manufacture deep fryers…”
Canada doesn’t make much of anything anymore. Try to buy a router bit made in Canada. Or a hockey stick.
All of this damnable stupidity from Canadian politicians takes the money right out of our pockets.
THAT’S WHY THEY’RE DOING IT.
Canadians are above employment. They’d rather be adopted. Life is easier that way. Just get me through my lifetime, someone else can pay. I’m Canadian, and the Government will look after things.
The headline says it all. Cutting off your nose hurts and damages your sense of smell. But, damn! It fees so good spiting your face!
To channel George Carlin: The average Kanadian sheep is absolutely stupid. Just think how super stupid the bottom half are.
Well, I cut off my nose to spite my face and I never regretted it. My face didn’t know what the hell had hit it! Hah! That bastard face deserved it all, too. How dare it fail fully to reflect my actual inner beauty!
Here in America … we simply have too much neon burning fossil fuels unnecessarily … that drives up the cost of our Roast Chicken
https://youtu.be/fSFIZleBSPI?si=_sNw0jkDawJKBC28
hey kenji. you should check the March 17 reader tips thread. You are loved, and defended. revisit that thread.
peace
I hadn’t seen that, thanks for pointing me there. I appreciate the support. But I suspect there are several people who don’t appreciate my commentary on SDA
– Unman and his/they/their ilk
– A couple of folk who fall into the category of Canadians who cannot answer what it means to be a Canadian without saying “well, it’s NOT being an American” .
– A few posters who won’t be happy till we start ditching MAD and nuke ourselves into the end of the world over … Putin is too heterosexual for the new world order.
Well, F3ck those people and keep on keepin’ on.
Canadians ARE Americans. My whole cultural life is replete with US movies, books, heroes, historical perspective and so much more.
That is true of many Canadians.
Admit it, fellow Canucks, or pretend that you only watched CBC and only read Atwood novels.
And my whole cultural life is replete with Canadian rock music (sorry Celine), badass hockey, massive CFL end zones, mountains lakes and rivers equal in beauty of the US, Canadian junk food, SCTV, John Candy, Dan Akroyd … the list goes on.
When we s-h-a-r-e … we’re better than isolationists
Kenji, in my early 20s certain members of Second City Toronto would sometimes drop by my home after a show when I threw a party.
They never went downstairs to the party room but always hung around the livingroom chatting with whoever happened to be about.
After a bit of that, Dan Akroyd would always suggest we play charades, so that’s what we did.
For background, Catherine O’Hara attended the same high school as I did. She was two grades below me but she always hung out with my crowd.
Forgot to mention that Robin Duke also attended my highschool, Catherine and her were classmates.
Wow Lupus. How envious am I!? I am guessing those folks were a hoot in real life too! But I won’t ask how much of Hunter’s white powder was floating around down in the basement … haha.
I think you can partially thank the Climate Change brigade for this scenario. Most of the commercial grade fryers made in the US are natural gas powered. There is a manufacturer of commercial grade fryers in Canada, but it is electric only. They are called Omcan and are headquartered and distribute out of Ontario (with distribution centers in LA, and Buffalo, NY as well).
You know the drill. Natural gas Bad. Electricity Good.
Shouldn’t we all be “air-frying” anyway? I keep reading that … but I haven’t seen any restaurant whose future relies on selling tasty food making that switch quite yet. Funny thing that.
I’m not paying someone to cook my food with something like an easy bake oven crossed with a hairdryer. With wifi.
Can’t beat pressure fried chicken. Even the grocery store uses them. Keeps chicken juicy.
Easy bake oven with a hairdryer!! Coffee spit funny!
BTW … our microwave blew up a couple years ago. The wife insisted I buy a hybrid MW that included an air fryer … because her cousins all had them or something. Yeah, we’ve never used it once.
I absolutely hate my air fryer, if I wanted to eat food that has the texture of rocks I go out into the garden. Oh this Canadian adores your posts, chin up buttercup.
From the story above:
“Now, some businesses unaffected by Trump’s tariffs are learning that they won’t emerge unscathed from the trade war, because goods they import from the U.S. are getting hit with Canada’s counter-tariffs.”
.
I’ve said it from the very beginning, we should NOT be counter-tariffing American goods.
What we should have done is slashed corporate taxes to the bone,dropped our capital gains taxes to the lowest in the G7,if not the lowest in the G20,and slashed income taxes to the bone,as well as dropped the G.S.T to 3 % and have the Government of Canada and the provinces and municipalities slash their budgets AND WAGES of all government employees.
Then the average Canadian business and the average Canadian worker would not have to suffer as much from this trade war.
They want us to suffer so the stupid ones – and they are legion – can blame America.
From your lips to to His ear.
Is Life Following Art dept.
Eve of Destruction – Barry McGuire – 1965
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_38SWIIKITE
Tariffs are supposed to support local business, giving them a chance to compete or move into a new market and actually make a profit. ie if Big corp USA is making a million widgets at 1$ each item and you cant make widgets for less then $1.10 then you cant compete.
But in practical terms if your widget cost $1.10 to make and it has a 1% failure rate compared to 0.01% failure rate and a cost of $100 to repair if it fails, you still cant compete.
People buy microsoft just because everyone buys Microsoft. a 25% tariff and they will still buy microsoft. You need to be on the order of 1/4 or 1/10 the price to make people not buy microsoft.
targeted tariffs can work, broad tariffs mostly make your citizens poorer.
Left unsaid is that all of these small business owners are essentially saying that they are damn proud to support industrial levels of fentanyl trafficking, human trafficking, and money laundering by Canadian banks. Go Canada! Elbows up!
Choke my chicken!
Amen brother.
That’ll show the American’s, we’ll tariff our own citizens for what? So we can f@ck our citizens. Now they can raise the price of their chicken to pay for the extra cost.
Just say NO to dirty bird.
Gross seed oils used.
Overcooked by JEETS off the plane that can’t cook and can’t drive.
Expensive, not worth it.
a quick glance tells us that as usual the politiSHUNS are focussing on a single aspect of a complex situation and applying a poorly thought out reflex countermeasure.
for the 85,043rd time.
Those don’t seem to be pressure fryers, so why is he paying “up to $27,000” for a product that should be in the $3k to $4k range?
or is it just a case of the CBC reporter having an attack of the stupids, and counting all 6 to 8 fryers as a single fryer that costs that much?
https://www.sinco.ca/collections/fryer
I think there’s a row of them, it isn’t just one at $27k
There is a BTU difference as well, though it may seem “not that much difference” … I think that difference is important when looking at temp recovery for the next batch of cold chicken which can be dunked and expected to cook thoroughly in 90 seconds or however long it takes, you wouldn’t want to be waiting another minute for the cooker to recover to the optimum temp. I don’t know if a pressure cooker recovers quicker, or if it only cooks quicker, the difference being the time it sits there empty waiting to recover temp. And you could turn 3 of them down and keep one hot outside of lunch and dinner rush times.
Imagine having to wait an hour after a hot water tank was emptied, for the next person to have a hot shower.
It’d be what I asked the salesperson to have some data on.
135k BTU at Quest / Russell
115k BTU at Simco, but less $
The math isn’t difficult for a water heater recovery time, but for chicken fryers you’d have to know you’re using the same weight of chicken each time, as well as knowing that if you cook with the oil temp turned up, it doesn’t last long after it starts to smoke.
Someone somewhere, has the chart showing this..
I was trying to find a “Dayco” brand deep fryer, but couldn’t find a data sheet for it. I did find a Vulcan LPG 150kBtu fryer at one company for $1895 so it’s still in the price range, I’ll just go with the CBC reporter had an attack of the Stupids.
I also wonder if it’s a case of the franchisee agreement requires you to purchase your equipment from corporate, in which case, it’s a bad business model.
The reason we don’t have manufacturing in Canada is because progressive governments have taxed and regulated it into oblivion. At least in the US, if a blue state wanted to put some BS union rules in place, there was always a lower tax right to work state nearby that the company could move to or in many cases China. Canada only had the China option.
So think of Canada as Detroit on a national scale and soon with similar demographics.
Self-castration is a beautiful thing.
https://youtu.be/ReT2nbYNdBU?si=6HU44h4ujVPFYUmQ
If Ontario and Quebec cause the reelection of the Liberals, Canada is finished. Western separation will become a matter of personal survival for most Albertans.