Karon Liu
Karon Liu covers how food businesses, restaurants and dining trends shape the way people eat, spend and gather, with a particular focus on the economics, rules and culture behind what ends up on the plate.
Restaurant economics and the cost of dining out
A core strand of Liu’s work looks at how rising costs and shifting business models change the experience of eating out. He reports on menu price inflation by tracking specific dishes over time, using examples like a cauliflower entrée whose price jump illustrates the combined pressure of food, wage and rent increases on restaurants and diners.
His coverage explains how these financial pressures make eating out less accessible for customers while still leaving restaurateurs struggling to stay profitable, connecting individual restaurant stories to wider economic trends.
Liu draws on interviews with owners and workers to show how restaurants attempt to balance higher costs, reduced traffic and changing dining patterns, including the impact of working from home on downtown business. This emphasis on real-world numbers and operational detail sets his work apart from generic food coverage by treating restaurants as businesses embedded in the broader economy.
Food products, trends and collaborations
Liu frequently tests and explains new food products and collaborations, treating them as both business experiments and cultural events. In his coverage of Kraft Dinner cream soda developed with a local soda company, he traces the partnership from launch through distribution, detailing where the drink is stocked, how the rollout expands to national retailers, and how the flavour profile is designed for mass appeal.
He combines tasting notes with reporting on brand strategy, showing how novelty products generate attention, skepticism and sales across supermarkets, specialty shops and restaurants. Liu also writes about head-to-head competitions between international and local pastry brands, such as macaron offerings from a Parisian institution and a homegrown patisserie sharing space in a major shopping centre.
In these pieces he compares pricing, product quality and customer experience, using specific desserts as a lens on competition, brand positioning and consumer choice in the retail food market. His work on food trends often connects the excitement around new products to what they signal about demand, marketing and the business of indulgence.
Rules, health and the changing restaurant environment
Regulation and public health are another recurring thread in Liu’s coverage of the restaurant sector.
He reports on rules governing animals in food establishments, explaining how public health legislation restricts dogs from indoor spaces where food is prepared or served and what that means for cafés, bakeries and restaurants. By speaking with business owners, he shows how operators navigate customer demand for pet-friendly spaces alongside legal obligations, insurance concerns and staff comfort.
Liu also examines the rise of takeout and delivery-only models, documenting how shrinking dining rooms, ghost kitchens and changing customer habits reshape restaurant design and operations. In these stories he considers what reduced dine-in traffic means for the social side of restaurants, including how communal spaces and in-person service are affected when more business happens off-premises.
His focus on rules, health and logistics gives readers a clear view of the constraints under which food businesses operate, beyond the menu and décor.
Recipes, home cooking and long-term food reporting
Liu has spent years developing and testing recipes as part of his role at the Toronto Star, ensuring that dishes work for home cooks before they appear in print. He writes service-oriented features that explain techniques, ingredients and culinary history in accessible terms, often using recipes to introduce readers to different cuisines and food traditions. Alongside this work, he covers restaurant openings and closings, profiles people working in the food industry and explores the culinary history of the city’s neighbourhoods.
His reporting during the pandemic highlighted the risks faced by restaurant and frontline food workers, connecting individual experiences to systemic challenges in the industry. Across features, columns and book-related projects, Liu consistently aims to link food with culture, history, identity and politics, treating meals and ingredients as entry points into broader social and economic stories.
The result is a beat that combines recipe development, industry reporting and cultural analysis, making his coverage a fit for stories that sit at the intersection of business, regulation and the everyday act of eating.
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