Montreal restaurants adapt to rising costs, but worry customers might be priced out

The restaurant industry as a whole is in need of a rethink. It's an industry which survives off (and helps to maintain) a permanent underclass of underpaid workers.

If any industry needed unionizing badly, it's this one.

I've always thought the value proposition of restaurants could essentially get cut into automats and fine dining.
The whole fine dining concept is mostly fine, and not overly exploitative; mostly due to the high salaries involved.
Chain/Mid-range is pretend servancy to let the middle class feel like they have agency over other humans, even underpaying servers to increase supplicancy.
Fast food has cooks busting their lives, for food that would not decline in quality if pre-prepared.
I'm undecided on counter only / food trucks.
- Chain/Mid-range is pretend servancy to let the middle class feel like they have agency over other humans, even underpaying servers to increase supplicancy.
  Having been in the industry, this is simply a strange take.
  Only the vast minority of guests I've waited-on in my time have even tried to exert authority over me. A quick reminder that they dictate their meal needs but not my time has set them straight quickly. And usually it's external stresses - ie a bad day - that has them acting up. Lend an ear and make a tippy friend if you can.
  It's a job. The job includes relaying orders to the real heroes in-back and grabbing what they may need but they're paying for it. Then they leave.
  Don't read some class struggle into it.
- Have you never eaten a McDonald's burger that's been sitting around for a little while?

If things were running on such low margins and shit working conditions, maybe, maybe, the industry as a whole was running on hope and dreams?

I feel like this applies to everywhere. I visited Montreal a couple months ago and was expecting somewhat lower prices than Vancouver just due to the insane lease costs in Vancouver, but the prices were essentially the same. I've also been in the US a couple times over the summer and the prices were usually worse once you took into account the USD/CAD conversion.

Toronto says "Hi".

How much of this is due to real estate costs? I'm both wondering about how much it costs to rent commercial real estate for a restaurant, as well as observing that if would-be customers are spending tons of their income just to have a place to sleep, then they have to cut down on non-essentials.

Can't speak to this situation, but some good restaurants where I live were forced to move due to exorbitant rent increases. Successful restaurants that'd been around for many years, one of them having been there as long as I'd lived here which is quite awhile.
You can only charge so much for a breakfast.
I'm not sure how it operates in Quebec, but commercial real estate is very different from residential: your landlord is basically your business partner, and, for good or (usually) for ill, they see themselves as having a share in your business.
Ergo, when you do well, they'll suck more blood out of you. When you do poorly, they'll...also suck more blood out of you and wonder why you aren't doing as well when all of your income is going to rent.
Larger companies that have the wherewithal to arm-twist their landlords into favourable contracts are generally better off, but there is generally no industry that's as parasitic, rent-seeking and non-value-adding as commercial real estate.