The Canteen Reopens In Dartmouth To Make Meals For People In Need
HALIFAX — It’s been a month since The Canteen closed its doors, but the restaurant’s co-owner Doug Townsend has just put in a brand-new food order.
Everything his team needs to make hundreds of bowls of chili has already been shipped. First thing Tuesday, Townsend, his partner and Canteen co-owner Renée Lavallée, and their few remaining staff will set up their kitchen for production.
But they won’t sell any of the food they make.
Instead, they’ll hand it over to a pair of local charities who will distribute it to community members who need a healthy meal.
It’s all part of Townsend and Lavallée’s latest initiative, which has seen the pair repurpose their restaurant’s kitchen to produce meals for people in need.
“The COVID-19 crisis has amplified the issue of food insecurity in our community, while simultaneously constraining not-for-profit’s capacity to serve the community due to social distancing policies. We saw an opportunity to help,” The Canteen wrote in a Facebook post on April 10.
As Townsend explained in an interview with Huddle, the idea came to him and Lavallée as they were trying to find a way to donate The Canteen’s unused inventory.
Townsend got in touch with the Dartmouth North Community Food Centre to see if they could take it, and over the course of a couple of conversations, that donation morphed into something much bigger.
Because of social distancing measures, the centre can’t bring in as many volunteers to cook meals for its clients. Meanwhile, there are more people than usual who need help getting enough food.
“What is normally a kitchen powered largely by volunteers, that dried up,” Townsend said. “Essentially their capacity just got slashed hard.”
“So we were like, this is ridiculous, we have a kitchen that’s sitting here, we have people that are looking to do some work, and then we have this amazing organization that’s struggling to get as many meals as they can, prepared right now. So it just made sense for us to start working together,” Townsend said.
As plans progressed, Townsend and Lavallée also began working with Margaret’s House in downtown Dartmouth. Now, they have plans to cook 300-400 meals a week for the two organizations.
The Community Food Centres Canada’s Good Food Access Fund will cover the cost of the food and packaging, and Townsend said he’s confident he can find a way to finance the rest of the costs of the project.
“We’re in survival mode for our business right now, so we’re trying to make it all work. But we realize how fortunate we are and how much need there is out there. And for us this is an amazing opportunity for us to do something that makes a difference in people’s lives right now,” he said.
Townsend said he and Lavallée were inspired to start the initiative after seeing businesses in other cities take on similar ones, and he hopes what they’re doing will spark other Halifax-area businesses to find ways to help as well.
“I hesitate to use the word contagious when we’re in a pandemic, but this is like a good kind of contagion,” he said. “There are a lot of other businesses that are already doing some amazing things, that are giving back to the community, but we hope that we’re just another business that helps to inspire people to do the same.”
More information on the Dartmouth North Community Food Centre and its programs click here. For more information on Margaret’s House click here.