Startup trying to boost foot traffic in downtown Toronto one step at a time

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Toronto’s downtown core has been struggling to return to its former self.

Post-pandemic, a number of businesses have been barely able to survive or have closed up shop as some workers resist the call to return to the office on a daily basis or have transitioned to remote work permanently.

However, bringing pre-pandemic foot traffic levels back to downtown streets and revitalizing office culture are keys to keeping the city’s economic engine running, especially in the face of a potentially damaging trade war, said Daniel Safayeni, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce’s vice-president of policy.

“In my position at the chamber of commerce, I saw the fact that even post-COVID … small businesses, retailers and restaurants that were contingent on foot traffic downtown never recovered,” he said. “Calls to return to the office have gone largely unanswered. There has been a real struggle to revitalize the downtown core post-COVID.”

Safayeni said he noticed how different the vibe was by his office on Dundas St. W., near University Ave., after the pandemic. Restaurants, stores and his favourite shops were closed because of the changes to workplace habits.

He thought at the time that it was a “structural adjustment” following the pandemic and believed economic activity would pick up, but cited the latest data from Moneris that showed spending hasn’t recovered in the downtown core to pre-2020 levels.

“There was a real feeling on my behalf that these businesses were struggling through no fault of their own,” Safayeni said.

He came up with an idea with Claudia Dessanti, a former chamber colleague, to do something about it and founded a Toronto startup on their own time.

They launched Hearsay Toronto last September, a newsletter and LinkedIn presence that connects 1,400 professionals to valuable insights and downtown networking opportunities and has an estimated reach of 8,300 people.

The newsletter, which Safayeni said has an 80% open rate, offers curated content in a straightforward and meaningful way that allows followers to arm themselves with the best information possible, pulled from the more than 1,000 policy and business events happening in the city every year.

“What we are trying to do is make in-office days more purposeful and help revitalize the downtown core,” Safayeni said. “We’ve seen an enormous appetite in people actually wanting to return to downtown, to attend these events and to support local businesses, particularly in the Path (underground pedestrian walkway network) and elsewhere that are reliant on foot traffic.”

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He said most subscribers are either in leadership positions or working in the private sector. About 80% are located in the GTA and represent people in finance, business, post-secondary institutions, non-profits, government and media.

The efforts of Safayeni and Dessanti have come at an opportune time.

With the buy-local movement in full swing following weeks of trade war rhetoric by U.S. President Donald Trump that materialized Tuesday with a 10% tariff on Canadian energy and a 25% tariff on all other Canadian goods, the threat to the economy has stirred emotions across the country.

“What we’re seeing now in light of the latest threats coming from the United States is almost a more emboldened, patriotic sense from the community of subscribers we have at Hearsay to not only engage in the resources that we are sending them, but making concerted attempts to come downtown to buy local, to support the local dry cleaner that they previously went to or the shawarma shop downtown that is looking for that foot traffic,” Safayeni said.