Every memorable meal begins with people. A cook perfects a recipe. A barista welcomes a regular by name. A supervisor helps a new staff member learn the ropes.
These moments build the kind of teams that keep guests coming back.
With new funding, PolicyWise for Children and Families will be helping more workplaces create these moments by expanding our Building Inclusive Workplaces project for Alberta’s food and beverage sector.
The challenges facing Alberta’s food and beverage sector
Building a strong team is what every business strives for. But when employers struggle to find and keep staff, a strong team can seem out of reach. Unfortunately, this has been the reality for many Alberta food and beverage businesses.
Across the province, the food and beverage sector continues to face staffing pressures. In early 2025, the accommodation and food services industry, which this sector is a part of, had Alberta’s highest job vacancy rate. At almost 5 percent, this industry was well above the province’s average job vacancy rate of 2.9 percent.
On top of this, most workers in the food and beverage sector are under 24. Between 2023 and 2024, close to half of all food service workers in Canada were in this demographic. Almost 95 percent of them are working part-time. This means the sector relies on a young, mobile workforce.
To address these challenges, Alberta’s food and beverage businesses need practical, inclusion-focused solutions that attract, support, and retain a young, mobile workforce.
A practical solution for rising demand
Since 2024, PolicyWise for Children & Families has been working on a practical solution for Alberta’s food and beverage sector. Our Building Inclusive Workplaces team believes hiring newcomer young adults is key to resolving the employment pressures the food and beverage sector feels.
Newcomer young adults are individuals aged 18 to 29 years old who have arrived in Canada within the past five years. Recent data show that nearly 17 percent of those with a bachelor’s degree are neither employed nor engaged in further education or training.
While this population represents a potential source of talent to help address labour shortages in the food and beverage sector, our research found this group faces many challenges of their own. Barriers such as unclear expectations, limited advancement opportunities, and experiences of exclusion often prevent newcomer young adults from staying and thriving in their roles.
Our research shows how important inclusive workplace practices are. They improve retention, support newcomer success, and strengthen the sector’s workforce.
By equipping the sector with practical tools and training to build inclusive workplaces, our project tackled persistent challenges around high turnover and limited labour supply. It shifted the focus from short-term hiring fixes to long-term workforce stability by fostering environments where newcomer youth feel welcomed, valued, and able to succeed. Ultimately, creating more inclusive workplaces will support Alberta’s economic development goals in tourism.
Creating and sharing more resources
Recently, we secured funding from the Government of Alberta’s Ministry of Jobs, Economy, Trade, and Immigration to continue and expand our Building Inclusive Workplaces project.
Over the next two years, we will build on the training modules, toolkits, and videos we created with our partners to help food and beverage leaders build capacity for workplace inclusion.
Using a community development approach, we will, for example, be developing for food and beverage leadership:
- A self-assessment tool to reflect on how well they support inclusion in their workplace.
- A practical guide to help interpret their self-assessment results and plan their next steps to strengthen inclusion practices.
- Additional learning resources that help them build expertise and confidence in creating inclusive workplaces.
We will be promoting these new resources, along with success stories, to organizations so they can adopt them across the province. This will also support the broad use of our project’s resources and encourage long-term sustainability for the food and beverage sector.
You can learn more about Building Inclusive Workplaces and access current materials on our project page.
Collaboratively identifying community needs
Our Building Inclusive Workplaces team will be collaborating with several community partners. Together, they will identify community needs, co-create solutions, and test them.
Since 2024, our team has been working with interest holders in Edmonton and the Bow Valley. As they expand their scope of work, they will engage new partners from other regions of Alberta. These new partners include:
- Food and beverage operators and owners, who will represent the interests of sector businesses.
- Immigrant and refugee-serving agencies, who will share the concerns and needs of newcomer communities.
- Youth-focused organizations, who will ensure youth’s perspectives are shared.
- Workforce development organizations, who will help connect businesses and community services by supporting inclusive recruitment and onboarding.
- Sector-based associations, who will promote the model and tools to food and beverage employers and support recruitment and engagement.
If your business, organization, or association is interested in collaborating with us, connect with our team at info@policywise.com.
Working with partners to put inclusion into practice
We hope that over the next two years, our collaborations will help the food and beverage sector build the kind of teams that welcome newcomer young adults, support their success, and keep service strong.
When workplaces welcome newcomer young adults and provide them clear pathways to grow, teams become more stable, service becomes more consistent, and businesses are better positioned to meet the province’s tourism goals. That is good for teams, good for guests, and good for Alberta’s economy.
Stay involved and start today
In the coming weeks, we will be announcing three workshops for food and beverage sector leadership. They will be taking place in February and March 2026.
To make sure you don’t miss them, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media.
You can also explore our current resources and make your workplace more inclusive by visiting our Building Inclusive Workplaces web page.
Project funders
Funding for this project is provided by the Government of Alberta’s Ministry of Jobs, Economy, Trade, and Immigration.
