DAL, the taste of food solidarity

In Saint-Henri, residents of the neighborhood are spoilt for choice when it comes to restaurants. But for many, when it comes to cooking, things get tough. Especially if you don't live near one of the three supermarkets, which are concentrated in one place and serve the entire neighborhood. It is in this regard that The Local Food Process (DAL) chose to intervene by founding a self-managed grocery store, which opened its doors last February.

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Undertaking collectively

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In the small neighborhood store, you can find everything — fresh vegetables and fruits, fresh vegetables and fruits, dairy products, condiments and spices, but also good humor and light. Residents are beginning to discover it and to stock up on it, which gives the collective time to make adjustments.

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“The DAL is a citizen collective in Saint-Henri that wants to tackle food insecurity, particularly in the western part of the neighborhood, explains Dimitri Espérance, co-founder and executive director of the collective. The grocer, who has lived in the neighborhood for six years, is well aware of what makes the neighborhood beautiful and what makes the daily lives of residents more difficult. So in 2019, he decided to meet his neighbours to better understand their food needs and get their impressions on the consequences of COVID as part of a vox pop and a petition. “The lack of access to food and fresh products is a frustration experienced by many,” says the social innovation consultant.

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The DAL is not the first food initiative in the neighborhood — there are in particular The Saint-Henri Community Fridge —, but with this project, Mr. Espérance wants to reach the general public. The goal is not only to help people eat well, but also to allow neighborhood residents to build relationships with each other and between neighbours. One thing led to another the idea of setting up a self-managed grocery store. It is a market that works thanks to the involvement of its members. Everyone must volunteer for three hours at the grocery store each month in exchange for a member discount. However, anyone can shop there. “The discount keeps the price affordable for non-members,” says the founder. It was during a conference that he discovered self-managed grocery stores, in particular that of Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn. Active since the 1970s, it serves 16,000 members — almost the same number as the entire population of Saint-Henri. The place is managed by its consumers, who are involved for a few hours a month, and only members can shop there. The DAL has chosen to adapt this model to the realities of residents, by adopting a system inspired by that of the cooperative. “Coop is more complicated to set up. Legally, it is obliged to charge fees to its members, with what is called a “social share”. It's a barrier that we didn't want to have,” explains Dimitri.

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For the DAL, the objective is to remove as much money as possible from the equation when it comes to accessibility to a good diet.

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Fighting the food desert

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While Saint-Henri is historically popular, it continues to undergo a radical transformation. In its last neighborhood census, conducted in 2016, Statistics Canada indicated that rents had increased by 22% in Saint-Henri since 2011. There was an increase of 8.7% in the number of condos, compared to 3.2% in the rest of Montreal Island. “Gentrification is the cause of a certain erosion of social ties between new residents and long-time citizens,” observes Mr. Espérance, who wants to bridge this gap. “We are trying to form a place where everyone has the opportunity to be in contact.”

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Despite the rapid gentrification that has plagued the neighborhood for several years, no other market has emerged in Saint-Henri — the DAL is the first to be established there in 25 years. As Dimitri Espérance explains to us, a so-called disadvantaged neighborhood is not necessarily synonymous with a food desert, while an affluent place can be a desert of this kind. The problem in Saint-Henri is well known, and not new, but the causes — and solutions — are rarely addressed. “A food desert is not a natural phenomenon that happens by chance in a place. There is a historical, social and economic context that explains it; it is not a situation that can be resolved naturally,” says Mr. Espérance. The deindustrialization of the neighborhood, which has been happening since the 1970s, has contributed to the impoverishment of the neighborhood, which has caused the food infrastructure to decline. In the last few years, many commercial premises have become residential, a more cost-effective approach for homeowners. In fact, over the past year, two convenience stores have closed their doors, and their premises are due to be transformed into housing. And due to COVID, several restaurants have also closed. You might think that gentrification is an incentive to open a grocery store, but according to Dimitri Espérance, that was not the case. Owners of commercial spaces tend to favor certain types of businesses, especially if they don't live in the neighborhood and don't see the point of living there. “Owners see [grocery stores] as a nuisance: there are a lot of deliveries, they generate waste, etc.”, he says. If, before the pandemic, there were many vacant commercial premises on Notre-Dame Street, the majority of them are now rented or in the process of being renovated.

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This is why it took a long time for La DAL to find a place, and major renovations were then necessary to welcome and brighten the small neighborhood grocery store. Initially, the collective wanted to reappropriate an old fire station, which had been unoccupied for a long time, in order to give it back to the citizens. Faced with the refusal of the City, the collective had to look for another place, always with the aim of opening a community food center.

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COVID has also worsened the needs. Given the lack of food infrastructure in the neighborhood, the situation became such that gigantic queues formed in front of establishments. “Living in a food desert during a period of lockdown is becoming serious,” says the grocer. After long procedures, DAL therefore came to take concrete action where no one had done it for years. “We are happy to arrive in the neighborhood with this offer, says Dimitri. Without the Community Fridge and without the DAL, the neighborhood would have become unliveable for many.”

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From food justice to the social economy

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What is food insecurity? “It is a state in which a person, or a group of people, finds themselves when the availability of healthy and nutritious foods, or the ability to acquire personally satisfying foods through socially acceptable means, is limited or uncertain,” reads the Quebec government website. Here is how Mr. Espérance explains food security: “A person who is always able to find nearby foods that are healthy and linked to their cultural habits.”

In Quebec, 17% of households are in a state of food insecurity — a situation that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. At the DAL, food is a universal right. “The government is not doing enough for this fundamental right to be respected,” believes Mr. Espérance. He cites food banks as an example, where you have to prove your right to use the service by producing proof of income in particular. “In Quebec, we often see a Judeo-Christian version of charity: when a person is experiencing insecurity, it is something individual, and they must be saved,” he notes, noting that cities like Toronto have a more intersectional vision of the issue.

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The DAL thus puts forward the concept of food justice by conceiving food from a systemic perspective. Thus, we want to take into account the exclusions created there, the people left behind and those who take advantage of this system. “For example, there is solidarity with local producers so that they are able to earn an attractive income, sufficient to allow them to not simply survive me,” he illustrates.

It was in 2019, while on sick leave, that the social innovation consultant was introduced to food agriculture. His discoveries influence the project to be born. “There is often a lack of historical perspective when it comes to these things,” he says, explaining some concepts that, today, continue to gain in popularity. “Permaculture, for example, is an appropriation of ancestral indigenous and African techniques. Our communities have long been used to doing urban agriculture as a way of ensuring food autonomy. Now, white people are being brought to the forefront,” he said. The same goes for food cooperatives, which inspired La DAL. “In North America, it is mainly Black communities that come together to increase their purchasing power and be more autonomous. These are things we did for generations, because we had to,” he said.

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To launch such a social economy business, the grocer had to face many challenges. “As a racialized person deciding to create an organization in a food insecurity environment, which is very white, and where racialized people are more often beneficiaries than leaders, it was difficult to establish myself,” says Dimitri Espérance in this neighborhood where the number of racialized people is below the Montreal average. He also had to be recognized by other actors in the neighborhood, elected officials and residents, in addition to seeking funding, finding space in a very competitive market and dealing with all the bureaucracy surrounding the operation of the non-profit organization, including obtaining permits.

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Eating, today and tomorrow

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Otherwise, the future of DAL looks promising or, at least, delicious. The collective is in the process of setting up a pilot project in collaboration with the Sud-Ouest Borough, where cooked meals will be made available to elderly people's homes, in addition to being sold at the grocery store. Despite his many hats, Dimitri Espérance remains zen. “I've considered myself a grocer for a while now,” he explains, as new members join DAL. The challenge is mainly to get members to come and see themselves as grocers; it's ongoing training.”

If he has one piece of advice for those who would like to embark on such an adventure, it is to know his community very well. “I am a new resident of Saint-Henri, and there are people who have been here for generations,” he said. Thus, the activities of DAL during the first six months consisted of meeting people in the neighborhood, developing relationships and talking with them. “We had to see if the perspective we have of the Saint-Henri food desert was shared. We did everything we could to ensure that our problem was extremely well defined.

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When we had this confirmation, we felt much more comfortable launching the project,” says Dimitri. Thus, the young entrepreneur felt supported by the community, in the face of obstacles, but also in each of his successes. He, who had never worked in a grocery store, went to “do his classes” — that is, get information, receive advice from a mentor and work — at Detour, a self-managed grocery store in Pointe-Saint-Charles, at Depot, a community food center in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, at Les Récoltes grocery store in Rosemont, and in zero waste grocery stores LOCO. “It's all very well, citizens who become grocers, but you also have to realize that beyond romanticism, it's a lot of work to find the skills you don't have,” he explains, keeping his feet on the ground. And now it's his turn to inspire others. “I realized that, even if that's not what I did it for at all, I had the opportunity to be a role model for people,” he says humbly.

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If I had seen a black or racialized person lead a social food organization, maybe I would have taken the plunge more quickly.” His second piece of advice is for those who look like him. “Don't focus on what people think you should do,” he urges. That's what happened when he set up La DAL. “It didn't go as we wanted,” he recalls. But we wanted it to be a great project. And starting small doesn't stop us from thinking big.”