Prepared Food and Beverage Sales Survey

Prepared Food and Beverage Sales Survey
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Detailed information for 2009

Status:

Active

Frequency:

Occasional

Record number:

5175

The objective of this survey is to collect information about the sales of prepared foods and non-alcoholic beverages by different establishments in Ontario and to collect information on the percentage of those sales that are exempt from the Ontario portion of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). The results of this survey are important in order to determine the allocation of tax revenues between the Ontario and federal governments.

Data release - June 22, 2010 (no public use microdata file will be produced by Statistics Canada)

Description

Statistics Canada, in partnership with the Ontario Ministry of Finance, conducts the Prepared Food and Beverage Sales Survey. The objective of the survey is to collect information about the sales of prepared foods and non-alcoholic beverages by different establishments and to collect information on the percentage of those sales that are exempt from the Ontario Retail Sales Tax. This information is used by the Ontario Ministry of Finance and Finance Canada to determine how revenue collected under the Ontario HST will be split between the provincial and federal governments.

Subjects

  • Accommodation and food
  • Business, consumer and property services
  • Income, pensions, spending and wealth
  • Personal and household taxation

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The target population includes establishments in Ontario that sell prepared food and beverages (i.e., restaurants, mobile food services, traveler accommodations, retail food businesses, etc.). These establishments are classified according to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 2007 and include NAICS 311811, 445291, 311811, 445110, 445120, 445291, 447110, 454210, 512130, 531120, 7111, 7112, 71131, 712, 7131, 713210, 713299, 7139, 7211, 7213, 722110, 722210, 722310, 722330, 722410, and 813410.

Instrument design

Statistics Canada consulted extensively with the Ontario Ministry of Finance to conduct a survey of businesses that sell prepared food and non-alcoholic beverages to provide them with statistical estimates of the proportion of these sales that were Retail Sales Tax exempt in 2009. Content and sampling were closely consulted with the client. A short questionnaire was developed to measure these concepts, adhering closely to the wording found in current provincial legislation regarding this tax exemption.

With the consent of the Ontario Ministry of Finance, consultations were also undertaken with Finance Canada whose information needs are similar to those of the survey sponsor. Internally, Business Special Surveys and Technology Statistics Division consulted extensively with Statistics Canada's HST Secretariat.

Sampling

This survey is a census with a cross-sectional design.

The Business Register is used to create the survey frame. The statistical unit is the establishment.

To select the sample, the following parameters were considered:
- Target size of 1,500 units
- Desired response rate of 60%
- CVs targeted by domain: 10% for industry groups 6, 11 and 12; 5.8% for the other industry groups

The domains are the following:

1. Bakeries (NAICS 311811 and 445291)
2. Cafeterias; coffee shops; lunch counters and snack bars; doughnut and muffin shops; limited-service restaurants (NAICS 722210)
3. Chip wagons; hot dog stands; coffee stands; mobile food services (NAICS 722330)
4. Cocktail lounges, taverns and bars (NAICS 722410)
5. Convenience stores (NAICS 445120 and 447110)
6. Convention centres (NAICS 531120)
7. Food service contractors (NAICS 722310)
8. Full-service restaurants (NAICS 722110)
9. Grocery stores (NAICS 445110)
10. Hotels and motels (NAICS 7211)
11. Lodging houses (NAICS 7213)
12. Private or social clubs or legion halls (NAICS 813410)
13. Snack bars (NAICS 512130, 7111, 7112, 71131, 712, 7131, 713210, 713299, 7139)
14. Vending machines (NAICS 454210), only vending machine operators that sold meals were included in the frame.

Each domain was stratified by size based on revenues to obtain one take-none stratum, two take-some strata and one take-all stratum. However, as this is the first time for this survey and the relationship between sales of prepared food and beverages under $4 and total sales of prepared food and beverages is unknown, a sample was selected from among the take-none strata. The generalized sampling system was subsequently used to allocate according to the total cost minimization and sample selection method.

Data sources

Data collection for this reference period: 2010-03-08 to 2010-04-09

Responding to this survey is mandatory.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents and extracted from administrative files.

A computer-assisted telephone interview was administered to the sampled businesses.

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s) .

Error detection

Edit and imputation was carried out on completed questionnaires only.

Edit rules are used to identify and correct records with inconsistent, incomplete or invalid responses. Where no direct correction is possible, the unacceptable values will be replaced by imputed values.

The questionnaire contains two questions eliciting an accepted range of responses. The following provide an explanation of how they appear in this text:

C0300 ) Please report your total sales of food and non-alcoholic beverages in 2009 in dollars $: We expect a number ranging from 0 $ to 999 999 999 997 $.

For the second question the respondent has the option answering either at question 1a or 1b.

C0401) Of that total, please report the amount of sales that were PST-exempt in 2009 in percentage %: We expect a percentage ranging from 0 % to 100 %.

C0400) Of that total, please report the amount of sales that were PST-exempt in 2009 in dollars: We expect a number ranging from 0 $ to 999 999 999 997 $.

Imputation

Imputation indicates the manner in which the record that was not corrected through edits will be corrected. As a general rule, it has been determined that we will not engage in imputation methods which might introduce bias. This means that donor imputation was used applying the general selection criteria, either alone or in the context of a specified value or nearest neighbour search using some other variable.

Estimation

We used re-weighting to compensate for total non-response.

The units selected during sampling were grouped into four categories: NR (non-response), OOS (out of scope), OOB (out of business), and REP (respondent in the scope of the survey).

The weight of non-respondents is redistributed among respondents who are in-scope and the OOS and the OOB, using the strata from the sampling plan as a reweighting class. Normally, when there are not enough respondents in a given stratum, a regrouping of strata is necessary. In this survey, only two strata had only one respondent; one of these strata had no non-respondents and the other had a reasonable total of sales of prepared food and beverages. For these reasons, no strata were regrouped.

Quality evaluation

In addition to a coherence analysis undertaken by Statistics Canada to review the survey results by comparing the results to other Statistics Canada data sources, both the Ontario Ministry of Finance and Finance Canada reviewed the survey results to ensure that the results were consistent with other information about tax revenues from both federal and provincial government sources.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

No public use microdata file will be produced by Statistics Canada and data will not be made available through the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI).

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

This methodology does not apply to this survey.

Data accuracy

We calculated the unweighted and weighted response rates (see section 6 of the document "Methodology for the Prepared Food and Beverage Sales Survey, 2009"). The unweighted response rate calculated at the estimate is 56%, while the weighted response rate is 60%. The unweighted response rate gives an idea of the response rate at the sample level, and is often used during collection, while the weighted rate provides an overall idea, i.e., at the population level.

Documentation

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