Poutine has been around for a while now. Chips, gravy and squeaky cheese curds have been turning up on London’s late-night menus for over a decade, from the four branches of Dip & Flip to Caribou Poutine in Liverpool, the UK’s first dedicated poutine restaurant.

It isn’t new. Canadians, ever polite, haven’t made a song and dance about their national cuisine in the UK. But new data suggests that could be about to change, with Canadian cuisine in UK foodservice showing more pent-up demand than most operators would guess.

For foodservice marketers, that gap between appetite and availability is the real story. It points to menu space that hasn’t been claimed by any single brand or operator yet, which is a rare thing in a market this mature.

What is driving demand for Canadian food in the UK?

New research from NIQ and CGA shows 61% of GB consumers want to try Canadian food when eating out, well ahead of American cuisine at 22%. The catch is availability: 57% say it’s quite or very difficult to find out of home, and that gap is exactly what operators should be circling.

Their hunch is that this emerging demand is down to the fact that the FIFA World Cup ran across the United States, Mexico and Canada in June and July 2026, and the Olympics lands in Los Angeles in July 2028.

Both put North American food culture in front of British audiences just as appetite for trying something new is already running high. As three in four consumers strongly agree or agree that they like the idea of trying new food and drink trends according to NIQ and CGA.

Which Canadian dishes are already on UK foodservice menus?

Beyond poutine’s established, gravy-soaked corner, there is the Montreal-style bagel. Montreal Style Bagels, a small bakery based on the Dartington Hall Estate in Devon, bakes the wood-fired, sweet-dough version that built Montreal’s reputation.

It’s a niche operation rather than a national rollout, but the ingredients for a bigger Canadian moment are already here. They just haven’t been picked up by many restaurant groups yet.

Poutine itself keeps evolving rather than standing still. The Cheese Bar in Camden runs a version with a British twist, using UK farm cheeses instead of curds. Riding House Café in Fitzrovia serves it with cauliflower, scallops or sriracha wings. Whilst Poutinie in Tooting Market does a six-hour smoked beef and short rib version – I’m in!

Which Canadian dishes are still missing from UK menus?

Nanaimo bars, butter tarts, tourtière and beavertails haven’t meaningfully surfaced on UK menus yet, as far as we can tell. If you know better, let us know on socials @jellybeanagency. Even as foodies, we haven’t come across them apart from on our travels. Indeed, NIQ and CGA’s own cuisine map puts Canadian food firmly in the emerging quadrant: high interest, low familiarity, hard to find.

Compare that with Thai, Mexican, Greek and Spanish food, all of which have moved measurably closer to saturated in the past year. Canadian cuisine, as we can see, hasn’t made that journey yet. But with willingness to try already high, it may simply come down to whether operators put it in front of people.

How can operators build trial for an unfamiliar cuisine?

The single biggest driver of trying something new is simply letting people sample the dish first, cited by 51% of consumers. Recommendation from someone they trust follows close behind at 49%, a figure that has jumped 10 percentage points in a year.

So, simply put sampling and word of mouth are the gateway. For a cuisine this unfamiliar, that might mean getting out from behind the counter with samples rather than waiting for demand to arrive on its own. For a marketing team, that translates into two clear, low-cost levers: sampling activations and word of mouth campaigns.

What does this mean for foodservice operators right now?

Cost inflation remains the dominant worry across foodservice, with 82% of operators naming food and drink costs a concern for the next 12 months.

But it is not just operators who are being squeezed, increasing cost of living pressures are driving consumers to eat out less but look for real quality and value when they do. And they aren’t retreating from trying new things when they head out, they’re simply more particular about the payoff. 73% cite value for money as the deciding factor when eating out, and 35% would rather pay more than see quality or portion size drop.

So, a well-made poutine or an authentic Montreal bagel sandwich, priced sensibly and made with quality ingredients, has a real shot at winning here. Offering operators a menu item aligned to demand with some novelty value built in.

It is fair to say Canadian cuisine won’t arrive as one big launch. Nothing happens fast in foodservice as we know. We predict it will arrive the way poutine did: one good version at a time, building credibility dish by dish until ordering the Canadian option stops feeling like a novelty. Based on the research the consumer appetite is already there, and two major sporting events are helping it along, one behind us and one still to come. For operators and the marketing teams behind them, the window to move first, rather than react once a competitor has already claimed the space, is open right now. Keep an eye on the menus. We think there may be some maple leaf action coming that has nothing to do with syrup.

Source: NIQ by CGA