Happy hour is back – The Globe and Mail

It is 3:30 p.m. on a Thursday, and despite the overcast, chilly autumn weather, the rooftop deck at Cactus Club Cafe in Toronto’s Financial District feels warm and inviting. It is exactly the feeling that Katherine Baldock was looking for when choosing where to bring her client.

“You need this energy: the music, the atmosphere. It makes me seem more fun as a salesperson because I’m in a fun environment,” she says.

Perched at a two-top table with her laptop open, Baldock spends a few moments making notes, reflecting on the meeting she has just finished and sending updates to her team at Tundra Technical Solutions, a Toronto-based staffing firm. Like many at the tables around her – insurance agents in suits, university students catching up after class and salespeople with their clients – she is taking part in happy hour, the few hours between lunch and dinner when discounts at restaurants and bars draw people out of their workplaces.

In the past year, happy hour has made a resurgence as office towers in the city fill back up following return-to-office mandates from Canada’s largest financial institutions. According to OpenTable’s 2026 Restaurant Dining Trends Report, reservations between 4 and 4:59 p.m. increased by 30 per cent between January and the end of August, 2025, compared to the same time span in the year before. And the trend is expected to grow – 42 per cent of Canadians surveyed for the report say they would like to see more happy hour and value promotions in 2026.

Andrej Holly, General Manager of Cactus Club Cafe in First Canadian Place, says the restaurant has had a 30- to 35-per-cent growth in reservations from last year.

“A lot of that growth is just from happy hour,” says Holly. “People looking for a deal on drinks, food, and a good vibe and service.”

That hunger led Sebastian Rosado Mustafa, a 29-year-old senior software engineer, to create cheaperdrinks.now, an interactive map of 421 Toronto restaurants and their current happy hour offerings with detailed, up-to-date information. Since launching the site in March this year, the website has grown in visits, with 1,400 clicks in September and 450 unique visitors during the first week of October.

Creating the site came naturally for Rosado Mustafa, who was already keeping tabs on happy hour deals as a way to continue going out with friends and colleagues after work or enjoy a meal with his girlfriend for less.

“I think people resonate with the idea of finding a good deal and putting down their phone to connect,” says Rosado Mustafa, whose favourite happy hour in Toronto is at Mexican restaurant Anejo, featuring $4 tacos and $7.50 margaritas (which typically cost $12.50 during regular hours).

While the downsides of consuming alcohol remain a big deterrent for many Canadians – last year, The Globe and Mail reported on the uptick in sales of non-alcoholic drinks as health groups pushed for warning labels on alcoholic products – drinking is starting to make a comeback.

In Canada, alcohol consumption among Gen Z, rose to 73 per cent this year, up from 56 per cent three years ago, according to the latest Bevtrac survey conducted by IWSR, the leading organization on global beverage data, which spoke with thousands of drinking age adults in 15 countries, including Canada. It also found that Gen Z drinkers were the most likely to consume alcoholic beverages with five or more people on their last occasion, suggesting that Gen Z considers drinking a way to connect.

Gen Z had a reputation for moderation, but these latest numbers bring it in line with the overall consumption rate across generations. The survey reports that Millennials remain the generation with the highest participation numbers for drinking, at 81 per cent, Generation X at 77 per cent, and Boomers at 71 per cent.

Edward Slingerland, a University of British Columbia professor and author of the book Drunk: How we Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization has been studying the evolutionary roots of humanity’s appetite for intoxication. The primary advantages of sharing a drink, he says, are creativity and social co-operation: Alcohol helps people relax and feel more comfortable sharing ideas with others.

The pandemic interrupted human sociality and after the lockdowns opened back up a lot of the negative consequences of the pandemic persisted, says Singerland. Gen Z workers, in particular reported feeling that their social skills were stunted by the pandemic and found more difficulty maintaining workplace relationships in the following years versus other generations. After years on Zoom calls and of working in hybrid environments, getting together socially in person can provide opportunities for career networking and building relationships.

Of course, happy hour meeting go-ers should be mindful about consumption. Booze can cloud judgement: alcohol downregulates your prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that weighs choices, predicts the consequences of actions and inhibits inappropriate urges, warns Slingerland. “There are ways to capture the benefits while mitigating the risks,” he says, pointing to tools such as mocktails and non-alcoholic beers as ways for people to feel that they are still bonding at happy hour without being intoxicated.

Colleagues Ravish Kamath and Nathan VanWyk work in insurance and now operate on a hybrid in-office schedule, which requires them to work downtown most days per week. They attend happy hour about twice a month as a way to connect with other people from work over cheap drinks and a bite to eat.

On Thursday, the 30- and 25-year-old attended happy hour at Cactus Club with three friends from work. Most were sipping a pint of beer, but one had a mocktail.

“I think the biggest reason we come out for happy hour is happiness. We’re not all from the same team, so it’s nice to go out for an hour with people from our office around our age and grab a cheap drink and just talk for a bit,” says VanWyk.