Corned beef, matzo ball soup, decades of Hollywood lore, and now a $34,000 utility bill. Canter's Deli, one of the most famous restaurants in Los Angeles, is warning that rising LADWP costs could force it to cut staff.
Third-generation owners and siblings Jacqueline and Marc Canter say the deli's bill from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power climbed to more than $34,000, nearly $10,000 higher than it was just four months ago.
"Our electric bill has skyrocketed," Jacqueline Canter said. "Bills are much, much higher than they should be."
An LA Institution Since 1931
Canter's opened in 1931 in Boyle Heights before moving to the Fairfax District, where it has been feeding night owls, regulars and celebrities for generations. It's one of the steadiest businesses left on a Fairfax corridor that has struggled with empty storefronts for years.
According to Marc Canter, winter bills used to average around $19,000, and summer bills ran $23,000 to $24,000. That seasonal gap of roughly $4,000 has now tripled to about $12,000. To save money, the deli has been shutting off the air conditioning in one dining room between midnight and 8 a.m., during a year when Southern California has been dealing with brutal heat waves.
So far, it hasn't been enough.
"When you look at your expenses, the only expense that you can really control is your labor," Marc Canter said. "If we don't have enough money to pay the payroll, then we have to cut back on labor. It's that simple."
That would put longtime employees at risk, some of whom have worked there for decades.
LADWP Points to a Possible Leak
LADWP isn't taking the blame. The utility said that over the past three months, Canter's electric charges rose 6.6%, water charges rose 21.6% and sewer charges jumped 45%. Electricity usage stayed flat, it said, but higher peak demand charges pushed costs up slightly.
"The substantial increases in water and related sewer charges may indicate a water leak or another source of elevated water consumption," the department said. It has offered to send a specialist to inspect the property.
Jacqueline Canter isn't buying that explanation.
"Everybody's bill has gone up so that's no excuse about a water leak. I think that's passing the buck," she said. "There's no water leak, we've done nothing differently than we've done now for 95 years, yet our bill has skyrocketed."
"We'll Get Through It Somehow"
The Canters say this is bigger than one deli. "It's not just Canter's, it's all over the city," Jacqueline said. "It's people who live in the neighborhood, people who work in the neighborhood, and other businesses."
Online, plenty of Angelenos agreed. One Reddit commenter who said they live around the corner wrote that their DWP bill had doubled this month. Another said their usual $160 electric bill came in at $647.
California's average electricity price was 27.63 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, 103% higher than the national average of 13.63 cents. Jot Condie, president and CEO of the California Restaurant Association, said electricity is "one of our fastest-growing fixed costs" for restaurants and is "forcing hard decisions on menu pricing, staffing, and investment."
LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia has already started looking into LADWP billing after a San Fernando Valley man went viral over a $3,300 power bill. "It doesn't sit right with me; it doesn't sit right with a lot of folks," Mejia told CBS LA.
Jacqueline Canter is staying defiant. "We've been through riots, we've been through earthquakes, we'll get through this," she said. "We intend to be here another 95 years, we'll get through it somehow."
Photo: ChildofMidnight at English Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
