Preserves: The Manitoba Food HIstory PODCAST

KENT DAVIES: You’re listening to Preserves: A Manitoba Food History Podcast. Exploring the rich, flavourful history of Manitoba food and the people who make it, sell it and eat it. From the packing table to the dinner table. From restaurant specials to grandma’s secret recipes. We consider the cultural, social, and commercial aspects of Manitoba food and what it means to us. I’m your host Kent Davies. As usual, I’m joined by Manitoba business historian, Professor Janis Thiessen.

JANIS THIESSEN: Hi, Kent. What’s in the pantry for us today?

KENT DAVIES: On this episode, we’re telling the story of Diversity Food Services with interviews with Chef Darwin Gaspar and Chief Operating Officer Ian Vickers. It’s a story we’ve been really wanting to tell for quite some time, and with the impact COVID-19 has had on the food industry, there was more of an impetus for us to do so. Diversity is a bit of an anomaly amongst food providers and we wanted to know if their service model had helped in any way to weather some of the devastation caused by the effects of COVID-19.

JANIS THIESSEN: That’s right, Kent. We’ve been interested in doing an episode on Diversity since becoming partners with them early on in the project.

KENT DAVIES: So, remind me and our listening audience, how did we end up partnering with them?

JANIS THIESSEN: Well, we wanted to have a food truck. We wanted to use a food truck as a mobile oral history lab where people could cook at the same time as we interviewed them. And we don’t know anything about food trucks. We did a bunch of research about how to attain one. What the rules were, all that sort of thing. But it doesn’t matter how much prep in advance you have, it’s not the same thing as owning a truck and realizing there is a whole host of complications that you just didn’t know about. So, by partnering with Diversity -- who have expertise in restaurants and in food management -- they could help us in figuring out what do we need to do to get this truck up and running. And so, it’s been great. And the other thing is that it’s not the kind of project that many other food related businesses would be on board with. It’s like, "Hey, why don’t we share a food truck and we’ll run it as this weird research lab and you’ll run it as a normal food truck and somehow it will all magically work out!” But they’re on board for challenges and for weirdness and for fun and this project has been nothing but challenges and weirdness and fun and so it’s been a great pairing.

KENT DAVIES: I also wanted this episode to address just how much the pandemic has affected the food industry. And there’s been countless articles about this. According to a new [Winnipeg] Free Press article, the majority of Manitoba eateries lost more than seventy per cent of their revenue since the pandemic and with government subsidies and supports winding down, many owners are very skeptical if they will ever fully recover.

JANIS THIESSEN: You know, the pandemic has been a real reminder to us it’s those local independent small businesses that really affect the flavour of a neighbourhood, and when they’re gone the neighbourhood is not the same. The challenges of the pandemic and the restrictions constantly changing in response to various waves -- it’s been very hard because there will be an announcement that in three days’ time, you know, restaurants are able to open to such and such capacity or they’re allowed to have patios, and it’s really not enough lead time for restaurants to be able to stock. And in the other direction, if they’re suddenly shut down effective in a couple days, well you’ve got a freezer full of food and now suddenly you have to unload it or just write off that cost. So, it’s been very expensive. And then too... you read some articles where restaurant owners or other small businesses blame CERB (Canada Emergency Response Benefit) for the inability to attract workers when they do reopen.¹ It’s not that so much as these are high risk industries to work in now.

KENT DAVIES: Yeah, and I want to talk about that. There’s food writers like Corey Mintz and others that are arguing that this pandemic really highlighted the way in which the industry has routinely exploited workers and treated them unfairly.² And some in the industry have moved on because of that. Can you talk about that?

JANIS THIESSEN: For sure. It’s a low wage industry whether you are front of house or back of house. It’s just -- and despite tips too -- it’s just not a well-paid job. It’s also really varying hours. There aren’t many who can count on the same shift, week to week. So that makes it hard to organize the rest of your life, right? The benefits, the vacations, those are not the same that they are in many other areas. So of course, if people have the opportunity to do something else, they do. Whether it’s cooking or whether it’s waiting tables, those are jobs that are not as respected seemingly in North America as they are in many parts of Europe. The assumption -- the incorrect assumption -- on the part of many North Americans is that, you know, folks that work in the restaurant industry are folks who are just between jobs. They’re young people making money just for fun while they going to school and living at home or it’s folks who can’t cut it in other industries. So, this is what they’re doing and that’s not the case. The pandemic has made us aware that a lot of those jobs we are really dependent on, right? And unfortunately, as was for so many essential workers, there was a couple months of... you know? Applause and a couple months where employers might have increased wages briefly but and I think Corey Mintz and others draw this to our attention really well, these are hazardous jobs even outside of a pandemic because of the speed of the line, because you’re working with, you know, in many cases open flame, right? Or certainly hot surfaces at a minimum and you've got really sharp knives. These are dangerous jobs. There’s an ethic within the industry that is coming to light through the work of Jen Agg and people like her to draw attention to the fact that some of the traditions, some of the practices within restaurants need to change because this culture of, you know, ‘push through’ no matter what the cost.³ Just bandage yourself up and keep going isn’t a healthy one. Right? But because the wages are so low, it’s hard for people to say well, “I’m sick. I’m going to call in sick." and "I cut myself so I’m going be looking after that cut." No, you just push through all that. So, hazard pay. I can see the value of it except this is an inherently hazardous job so there should always be hazard pay. Right? These should just be better compensated jobs.

KENT DAVIES: This episode is a bit of a departure of what we regularly do and it is pretty recent history we’re dealing with here. Although it deals with the history of Diversity Food Services as well. After doing this episode, it’s hard not to be pessimistic. But after talking with Ian Vickers, there’s some degree of hope as well. This situation may have prompted more people to maybe think about where their food comes from and to buy better, to buy locally and maybe to think about essential workers and what they do for us every day.

JANIS THIESSEN: Yeah, one of the exciting things about taking with Ian Vickers is of course we love him because he’s our research partner but we also love him because of the very innovative way that they have created a food service within Winnipeg. And so, to hear him talk about how he still sees hope in the midst of what has been an incredibly hard year and a half for him. You know I’ve had job stability in a way that Ian Vickers and the folks at Diversity and the folks in the restaurant industry have not had. And I haven’t had the same constant changes to how my work is structured and the way restaurants have. And that he still has hope and optimism in the midst of all that is really an encouragement to me and I’m sure others when they listen to this episode.

KENT DAVIES: Alright, let’s have a listen.

DARWIN GASPAR: [To Customer] It’s, it’s the cheese we put in our poutine. It’s basically a mixture of gouda and red-hot chili. Yeah. Just turn it into a poutine? Okay.

KENT DAVIES: That’s Darwin Gaspar from Diversity Food Services.⁴ We’re outside SEED Winnipeg, a non-profit agency that works to reduce poverty through employment and economic development programs. We’re here because they have a partnership with Diversity. Today, Gaspar is operating a food truck in their parking lot. And not just any food truck. It’s the Manitoba Food History truck. Over the course of the pandemic, the Manitoba Food History project has been unable to conduct interviews on-board our mobile research kitchen. Usually around this time we’d be travelling around Manitoba talking with folks at different festivals, or community events. Since that’s not the case, Darwin and Diversity Food Services are putting the truck to good use. Serving lunch to the staff of SEED and various walk ups from North End Winnipeg.⁵ Some of which are surprised to see a food truck even operating. As many restaurants can attest to, it’s been a struggle to serve food during the pandemic.

DARWIN GASPAR: So, if it’s a normal, non-COVID occasion, you would already know, “okay, I have this many events, it’s going to make me this much money, and rent costs this much.” And they already calculate that for the entire year. But with COVID, obviously like -- a lot of events got cancelled, everybody has to look into their books and see, “okay, how am I going to pay for bills.” And if the relationship between the kitchen operator and the person occupying the property -- the person you’re paying rent and you don’t agree, then it makes it very difficult for restaurants to make ends meet.

KENT DAVIES: According to Restaurants Canada, the food service industry lost between twenty-one to forty-four billion dollars over the course of the pandemic.⁶ Social distancing measures and public health restrictions, while essential to combat the spread of COVID-19, have added multiple logistical and financial challenges to the daily routines of many food service providers. In addition, restaurants are experiencing increased job turnover caused by constant layoffs and recalls during each subsequent wave of the pandemic.⁷ This has all led to an unprecedented amount of restaurant closures across Canada.

DARWIN GASPAR: In the beginning we heard so many places closed down and they said they’re not coming back. So, we didn’t know what was happening and that was giving a lot of stress, anxiety to a lot of people. I don’t know what’s going to happen by December or by fall. It’s too soon to say what’s going to happen for us.

KENT DAVIES: It’s estimated that over ten thousand restaurants in Canada have closed since March 2020, leading to hundreds of thousands of job losses.⁸ While federal and provincial governments offered some financial support to soften the hardships encored by the food service industry, in order to survive many dine-in restaurants have adopted new service models.⁹

DARWIN GASPAR: So, ever since the pandemic, we’ve started trying to figure out different ways to earn an income. One of which is the food truck. So far, we’ve only been starting operating three weeks ago, this is our third week today. So, again it’s a lot of the menu that’s already at the University of Winnipeg. There’s nothing that we haven’t done before. So, for us it’s just trying to find people to buy things from us.

KENT DAVIES: Gaspar has been working in the food service industry most his life. His love of making food led him to take culinary arts training at Red River College where he’s now an instructor.

DARWIN GASPAR: I know that back when I was a kid, like my parents and my grandparents would always talk about food all the time. I guess for us it’s a big part of our family, is food. And I’ve always tried to make something that’s good, that I would show to everyone when I was younger. And during high school and university, I’ve always had part time jobs that involved the restaurant industry. And when I like realized that maybe university wasn’t for me at the time. That’s when I decided to go to culinary school -- six years ago. And ever since then I’ve just been cooking.

KENT DAVIES: Gaspar been recognized for his culinary skills winning a provincial competition in 2015. Now as Diversity’s Head Chef, Gaspar has assumed a number of different roles among them is running the food truck; a task he is uniquely qualified for.

DARWIN GASPAR: I wouldn’t say it’s a big transition. It’s different, because you have to figure out -- working in a small kitchen that doesn’t have access to electricity all the time, doesn’t have access to water all the time. So, I have to be mindful about what I have. Like after high school, I actually did a little bit of auto mechanics when I was like in my early twenties. So, I have a little bit of a background with like how vehicles work so for me, it was like a smooth transition going from like operating a kitchen to a mobile kitchen. ‘Cause I have background on both the mechanical part of a truck and like the logistical part of a kitchen.

KENT DAVIES: During the summer months of the pandemic, some restaurants have been taking full advantage of their patios offering outdoor dining. With the lack of indoor eating options, one would assume that food trucks would also be a viable option when ‘eating out.’ However, permits and stringent regulations are even a bigger barrier then they were before.¹⁰

DARWIN GASPAR: So, I guess what the biggest thing we’re trying to figure out is the permits. There’s a lot of permits that we need and a lot of regulations that we have to know before we can even start the food truck. So far, the reason we’re here at the SEED Foundation is because it’s a private parking lot. We don’t have a parking permit from the city because it’s already -- almost August that it wouldn’t make sense for us to get a permit that costs thousands of dollars to operate a truck that we just spent more thousands of dollars from, right? So, right now we’re basically having friends help us out.

KENT DAVIES: The lack of festivals, public gatherings and decreased foot traffic with many Manitobans’ working from home has also made it difficult for even the most popular of food trucks to make a profit over the last two summers.¹¹ A lot has changed in the food service industry since the start of the pandemic. Many restaurants which managed to remain open are now offering only carry-out and delivery. Some rely on third-party delivery apps which also affect their bottom line.¹² These so called, ‘ghost kitchens’ have reversed a pre-pandemic trend that was once favoring communal spaces for sit down dinning.¹³ Now, some are speculating that diminished dine-in options may be the norm long after restrictions loosen in a post-pandemic world.¹⁴ That’s not all that’s changed. In the early days of the pandemic shutdown, decreased demand also meant that food providers had an excess of raw food, sometimes from local suppliers who were also dealing with cancelled contracts and a significant loss of revenue.¹⁵ This prompted some businesses in the food service industry to go the extra step of not only offer meals but groceries as well.¹⁶ Diversity was one of them.

DARWIN GASPAR: It was interesting, because obviously all of us are cooks. And we suddenly had to think of a mindset of retail, as a grocery store. So, I’m sure it was like… it was actually a big change for us to go from being cooks to suddenly being grocery store workers all within a week. And we were trying like -- many different ways to help us organize ourselves and sort of keep everybody sane. In the beginning, we’ve actually had some interesting orders. Like people were ordering -- sacks of flour, cases of eggs. Someone would order like twenty kilos of strawberries. And obviously like throughout the pandemic, we all heard about people suddenly having a lot of time so they would start doing baking. And not just baking for themselves, baking for their entire family. So, we’ve had some very interesting orders and definitely.

KENT DAVIES: Darwin credits one of the reasons Diversity has managed to stay afloat during the pandemic is it’s unique structure.

DARWIN GASPAR: So, that’s the benefit that I feel like we’re very strong at is flexibility. We have a very small core team that can easily adjust to any situation very quickly. But yet at the same time, our purchasing power through the help of the University and through the help of our various locations, we have enough buying power to just get other… get all of our suppliers to help us out to acquire goods. And then we can easily just like within a week have a website ready. Have the grocery store items already posted. Have a system set up. We’re just that type of company that’s very flexible, we’re not something like for example like a giant franchise that would have to coordinate between a head of a head of a head, and then bring it back down again. Which would probably… some people probably took months to figure that out, us it took us a week.

IAN VICKERS: Well, um. Diversity is a strange little company.

KENT DAVIES: That’s Ian Vickers, Diversity Food Services chief operating officer. He’s explaining why Diversity is fairly unique in the food service landscape.

IAN VICKERS: Diversity is a social enterprise owned by two not for profits. So, the two non-for-profits that own Diversity are SEED Winnipeg which is this fantastic group who work out of the north end, and their primary concern is helping people who--have been systemically marginalized. And our other owner is obviously the University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation. This non-for-profit that’s within the non-for-profit of the University that’s primary function is to build sustainable buildings for the University and for the community. Basically, the University had decided that it was going to build a residence, and build a recreation centre and build what would become the Buhler centre and Dr. Axworthy looked at things and said, “hey I could give all this money to a bunch of development companies or I could just start my own development company,” and tasked it with building things in this very sustainable way. Dr. Axworthy and Sherman Kreiner looked at things and said, “we’re building this residence and we’re going to be bringing in all these people here and Macleans magazine keeps telling us that we have the worst food available on any campus in the country. We shouldn’t do that. We’d like our sustainable option. So, how are we going to do that?” And so, they reached out to SEED and said, “how about you help us start this company.”

KENT DAVIES: Sustainability, according to Vickers not only reflects their distinct social enterprise model but Diversity’s attention to delivering food in ethically and environmentally conscious ways.

IAN VICKERS: Our thoughts on sustainability come from those two parent companies and so the UWCRC basically says to us, “you know, we want you to feed really good sustainable food to the University Winnipeg community.” SEED Winnipeg says, “we want you to pay living wages, and be good employers and employ people from marginalized backgrounds.” And so, what Diversity does is basically instead of paying our owners a traditional return on investment, the return on investment that the owners expect is us feeding those social mandates. As a result, what we give them is the most sustainable food service company available on any campus in North America.

KENT DAVIES: Vickers argues that Diversity’s approach has a net benefit that extends beyond the University campus and hopes other campuses take a look at adopting their model.

IAN VICKERS: When I think about something as simple as coffee. Right? When we buy our coffee because we don’t own a franchise operation because we don’t have any of those shareholder equity kinds of things right? We’re not beholden to a Starbucks or a Tim Hortons or a Van Houtte or a Kraft to determine what our kind of sustainability options are. So instead, we’re able to go to a local Canadian roaster and say to them, “you guys pay your workers a living wage. These are the same values that we have. So, we want to business with you. Can you buy all organic, either fair trade or co-operatively generated beans? You know, roast those beans off. Ship them to us.” We’re going to buy a lot because let’s be honest the University runs on coffee. They’re now guaranteed a certain volume of purchasing that’s going to happen. They’re going to ship it to us in boxes that are lined with compostable bags so there’s virtually no foot print at the end of it. We throw the compostable bags in the compost. We take the boxes afterwards. We fold them all up. We ship them back to them so they can ship them back to us in the same containers again. Again, ways that we’re work with these otherwise small companies because of the value of what we are able to add by being the anchor purchaser. They’re now able to bring those goods to market to other suppliers. Other people can now buy those same coffee beans that we’ve now asked them to make for us. That’s just coffee, right? Now think about that in the terms of we bought from eighty-six different vendors last year because we tend to deal with just a local farmer for tomatoes, right? Just a local farmer for cucumbers or potatoes or onions. Right? So, when you sort of scale that up and what it’s mean is why we do so well with those sustainability indexes is because we’re able to have that bigger impact.

KENT DAVIES: Over the years, Vickers has played a big role in supporting Diversity’s mandate, and contributing to its success. It’s a job he admits he didn’t see coming as he was ready to retire from the hospitality industry. An industry he’s been working in most of his life.

IAN VICKERS: I guess I’ve been in the industry, twenty-six… twenty-six years. Just it’s one of those things you become passionate about once you’re in it. I actually, my second job when I was in high school was washing dishes in a little greasy spoon in southern Ontario. And I worked in the dish pit and sort of worked my way through that place and then got into quick service and I had some fantastic opportunities in Toronto. I was working with Oliver & Bonacini group. Just one of those great experiences. Got to work with some industry leaders and some fantastic chefs and really started to understand food that way.

KENT DAVIES: After his move to Winnipeg Vickers was looking for something outside the food industry when he was approached by Diversity’s board of directors.

IAN VICKERS: With Diversity, so it was during one of my breaks from hospitality. I decided I was going to get out of the restaurant industry because the late nights and the long hours and all of the things that go a long with that lifestyle were not conducive to in my opinion the family I was in the process of starting. My wife and I just moved to Winnipeg. We’d been here for a while and I was looking for a restart and so I did what one does at that stage and went back to school and went to the PACE program at the University of Winnipeg. I was enrolled in project management and well I was sort of completing that I was approached by some people who were on the board of the directors for Diversity foods and asked, “hey we’ve got this group of people who really want to do food service in a different way and we understand you have this background. Would you like to talk to us about how we could work together and you could be on the team here?” In the hospitality industry it’s pretty common for a manager level person to be sort of working a hundred hours a work week. Diversity didn’t have that lifestyle and so for the last seven years I’ve been chief operating office for Diversity and have not looked back and have been very happy with this decision. It’s a good life balance that also allows me to stay in the industry that I love.

KENT DAVIES: For Vickers, Diversity was the perfect fit not only in terms of hours but mandate as well. Vickers wanted to help manage a food service provider that was interested in doing things in a more socially conscious way.

IAN VICKERS: If we actually care about people and planet over profit. If we actually can look at a thing and say you know, yes, compostable packaging matters. The fact that these things leave this planet is a good thing. Yes, we should not be harvesting fish off season by having giant farms that are massively polluting our oceans. Yeah, your sugar doesn’t have to be derived by forced labour. Your produce doesn’t have to be farmed by U.S. prisoners. Right? Instead, we can just buy vegetables that don’t come from that. We’ll pay a little bit more to do business with local small businesses instead and those local farmers. That’s the way we can look at things and it’s hard. Did it take us a lot of trial and error and actually focusing in and trying to figure out what are the things that really matter? What are the things that we just can’t do because it doesn’t work? And what are the things that we can? And we did have to go through that stage.

KENT DAVIES: Despite the many logistical and financial challenges of operating a business in a socially conscious way, Diversity managed to expand; adding new food outlets and growing their workforce. Their approach has also earned them multiple awards including the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education which has routinely recognized Diversity as the most sustainable campus food provider in North America.¹⁷

Then, in early 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

IAN VICKERS: We watched those cruise ships and understood that there was a pandemic coming. Our first thought was if this pandemic comes to Manitoba how do we make sure that we aren’t part of the problem. As a major vector for transmission that hospitality could be with all those people in our dining rooms, with all those people going through our spaces, how do we make sure we’re not the ones who take down campus? We came up with a plan where we all agreed, you know when the first case of COVID was discovered in Canada. That’s the moment when we would stop using reusable cutlery and reusable bowls. We would take everything to a single use packaging materials and we would stop allowing suppliers to access our kitchens. We would start having our deliveries received in a loading bay area and then we’d put them in quarantine area for three to five days. Implement masks. And so, we agreed early on, in the early days what our thresholds would be and what would be the triggers for different levels of precaution would kick in.

KENT DAVIES: At the onset of the pandemic Vickers knew that Diversity’s services would change on campus but what he didn’t know was how dramatically.

IAN VICKERS: We had assumed that campus would continue to operate at reduced capacities. That was my mistake. I will wear that mistake. My assumption was not that campus would shut down. I didn’t assume that would be an option.

KENT DAVIES: Despite taking a proactive approach the extremely unpredictable nature of the pandemic left Vickers having to make tough decisions regarding the future of Diversity.

IAN VICKERS: Things started to close down and we realized how fast things were going to close down. We went through this process of determining who would get laid off and our first thought was we need to get all of our staff laid off quickly so they can be first in line at the employment insurance office. And so, what’s crazy is we sort of went through this process where we were like,” okay, whom do we lay off? And what stages?” And we went through the whole thing on the Friday and I remember this because the Friday was just this horrible, horrible day. Wow, we are going to lay off this person and we’re going to lay off this person and we’re going to lay off this person and it was just these swaths of people and then the Monday came around and none of it mattered the answer was we were going to lay off almost everybody and then three days later or five days later the federal government was, “hey we’ve created the new CERB.” So, we had to bring all of our staff back to cancel out their E.I. and do their paperwork so they could get on to CERB. Three weeks after that the government came back and said, “hey, we’re going to do this wage subsidy program.” We can recall some more of our people now and have them come back and do these other jobs because there’s this wage subsidy. That’s wonderful. You know? And we did all that and we did it thinking it was going to be this sort of three-month thing and maybe get through the summer and by May we’ll be back. No, by June we’ll be back. By July we’ll be back. Okay, you know we’ll be back in September. And then when September rolled around and it was clear the University wasn’t going to be reopening that when we actually had to say to those employees, “we can’t do this anymore guys we need to now just release you.” It’s just this absolutely horrible gut punch of an experience. Last March we had a hundred and eight people working in Diversity. We have twenty-four right now. We basically had to shrink our company down to being just operating on campus at the University of Winnipeg and of course there was the part where we had to refund all of those students who were on meal plans. We had to suddenly get current with all of our suppliers and suddenly there was no more revenue coming in because all the events were cancelled and we had to get everybody out of our operations and so it just created this horrible cash crunch scenario that we’re still…we’ll probably be suffering the full financial effects of this for many, many years to come.

KENT DAVIES: Diversity also had the added responsibility of being the main food provider on the University of Winnipeg campus. Many students were still relying on Diversity to get affordable food especially when options were limited in the early days of the pandemic.

IAN VICKERS: It’s an extra responsibility for us. It means we don’t have the privilege of just being able to shut down. Right? Like part of my brain first said last September, “okay we close the company. Lay everybody off, including myself, everybody. Close it. Freeze it in time and reopen it when campus reopens.” And the answer is we don’t have that privilege because we actually need to service this community who we’ve committed to serving that’s why we exist. It means we’re able to keep at least twenty-four of the jobs going and the University of Winnipeg has been fantastic as a landlord for us in that they’re not holding accountable for our full rent during this past year while campus is closed. We’re paying basically what I hope is the value that it costs the University to have us occupy the space.

KENT DAVIES: Facing a campus wide closure, loss of contracts, and a monetary crisis, Diversity was forced to think of new ways of how to operate.

IAN VICKERS: Within a week of the shut down our chef, Jessica came to me and said, “hey, our suppliers are not going to have any way to bring their goods to market. In Toronto and Vancouver, I’m seeing these restaurants already pivoting to the grocery model and going to this online grocery product.” And so, we were one of the first in Winnipeg to actually launch our restaurant and make that jump to online grocery sales. Basically within…campus shut down on Friday the thirteenth before the following Friday we had our grocery store online up and running and delivering to largely-- our primary costumer continues to be the campus community. We’ve been able to take those goods to market now and so our suppliers and our farmers and those people who we like to business with can continue to have an outlet through us. And we can continue to keep those relationships alive. I mean honestly my team is brilliant because they think in these ways where they are just like. “let’s just do this.” We’re just going to launch a website and switch our entire business model to grocery and from there we looked at it and said, “well okay we are going to continue to have some people on campus and we need to be able to get food to them in a way that’s meaningful,” so we launched an app that so people can order online and we do delivery to wherever you are on campus.

KENT DAVIES: While pivoting to a delivery model is helping keep many food service businesses alive, Vickers worries about the long-term effects on the industry as more and more Canadians rely on home delivery platforms for their meals.¹⁸ Increased waste from take-out containers, reliance of third-party apps over local delivery providers, and more automation has lasting environmental and economic consequences.¹⁹ ‘Ghost kitchens’ also redefine the restaurant experience which once could be a fun, relaxing, social event. As we’ve learned from this project, eating a meal together with friends and family or even someone new is an important social ritual that defines us as society and has been vastly diminished during the pandemic. Even with the prospect of a selective reopening Vickers knows that the service model Diversity once had won’t be the same.²⁰

IAN VICKERS: We’re changing our entire service style so that you will probably walk up to a counter, ask for food and we will make it for you and hand it over to you. Self-serve coffee. We can’t do that now. Right? We can’t have people ladle their own soup. The challenge is that we want people to be able to interact with those humans who are making their food. We want you to be able to see that there is real peppers and real ingredients and real tomatoes from local farmers being used to cook so, we can’t just seal the thing off and say walk up to you know go on your app and punch in your order and food will magically appear in front of you. That isn’t how it’s going to work for us. So, instead we’re trying to do that in a way that you still see the people who are actually making this food. You can actually still have that human connection. That human interaction. It’s part of what makes Diversity unique. That we try to balance those things. But it’s also adds an extra challenge to the equation.

KENT DAVIES: In the aftermath of the pandemic Vickers also worries about the mental health of food service workers that have had to endure so much uncertainty and stress over the past year.²¹

IAN VICKERS: My, my major concern right now is just how we come back right? We’re going to have a bunch of people who either are like myself privileged enough to have been able to keep our positions, keep our paychecks coming in. Keep, keep things going and being able to pivot. I think we’re going to have a lot of people who sort of have survivor syndrome after that. We’re going to have a bunch of people who were let go and laid off who are going to be returning to work either with us or other companies who are going to come back with sort of the understanding that they aren’t necessary when we weren’t able to fill spaces for them. And then the last group of people are going to be the people who were deemed essential and yet not essential enough to actually get on the priority vaccination list which means really are you essential? The labour I provide is essential but my body and my family is disposable. All of the trauma that’s going to be in places as people come back and how that’s going to be like for a workplace.

KENT DAVIES: Something that gives Vickers hope for the future of the food service industry is the number of consumers who made a point of supporting food service workers and the local economy during the pandemic. ²²

IAN VICKERS: We’ve seen a lot of social movements really take off during lock down. There’s been a lot of people who have a lot of time to actually look at things and say, “how can I best mobilize my dollars to help my local economy to help the people that are here?” Right? And when you think in those terms you start to make some really great decisions. We were on this fantastic trajectory pre-pandemic here in Canada and here in Manitoba especially. We saw more and more co-operatives firing up. We saw more and more social enterprises coming online. All of those things were beautiful and they really did mean we were following that right trajectory where people were caring about localism. People were concerned about good quality jobs. That’s what I’m optimistic about.

KENT DAVIES: Despite the challenges Diversity has faced throughout the pandemic, Vickers still sees the opportunity in social enterprise paving the way for a sustainable, socially conscious future that can be adaptable in times of crisis.

IAN VICKERS: When it comes to build back better. I mean, I think social enterprise has a huge role to play in that. I mean, the reality is that we can take all of the values of non-for-profits have and instead actually have a business do those things and use business tools to finance it. So, you’re not relying on this incoming stream of donations. The upside of social enterprise is that you end up at this place where we can finance the good work ourselves by just having a competitive product that people care enough about. That’s really what Diversity has been trying to do all along is be a model for other institutions and other frameworks to look at and say, you can actually accomplish all of these outcomes. All of these deliverables. All of this sustainability and be a market competitive framework. But it’s self-sufficient. It feeds itself. It doesn’t need anything else.

SOURCES

¹ Gabrielle Piché, "Worked up over no workers," Winnipeg Free Press, July 28, 2021. Accessed, July 28, 2021.

² Corey Mintz. “People want to cook and serve food. They also want decent pay,” TVO, June 21, 2021. Accessed June 25, 2021.

³ Jen Agg. “I’ve spent my life building restaurants. COVID-19 has killed their magic – and threatened their future,” The Globe and Mail, December 5, 2020. Accessed August 4, 2021.

⁴ Diversity Food Services. Accessed June 24, 2021.

⁵ Seed Winnipeg. Accessed June 24, 2021.

⁶ Leslie Wu. “60 Percent of Canadian Restaurants Could Close in the Next Three Months Due To Covid-19, Says Industry Group,” Forbes, August 31, 2020. Accessed, March 20, 2021.

⁷ Andrew Coppolino. “Employees are leaving food service jobs just as things reopen,” CBC News, June 5, 2021. Accessed June 24, 2021; Gabrielle Piché, “Worked up over no workers,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 28, 2021. Accessed, July 28, 2021.

⁸ Karen Doradea. “10,000 restaurants have closed across Canada since the start of the pandemic,” Daily Hive, January 4, 2021. Accessed June 24, 2021.

⁹ Ellen Goddard. "The impact of COVID‐19 on food retail and food service in Canada: A second assessment." Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie 69, no. 2 (2021): 167-175.

¹⁰ Charles Lefebvre. “How food trucks will operate after health orders are lifted,” CTV News, April 27, 2020. Accessed March 20, 2021.

¹¹ “Winnipeg food truck owners adapt to survive during the pandemic,”CBC News, June 23, 2020. Accessed June 24, 2021.

¹² Meredith MacLeod. “New Normal: The year in takeout trends as restaurants face a reckoning,” CTV News, January 1, 2021. Accessed March 21, 2021.

¹³ Erin Kushner. “Coronavirus prompts some restaurants to rethink communal tables,” Boston March 12, 2020. Accessed June 24, 2021.

¹⁴ Ellen Goddard. "The impact of COVID‐19 on food retail and food service in Canada: A second assessment." Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie 69, no. 2 (2021): 172-173; Meredith MacLeod. “New Normal: The year in takeout trends as restaurants face a reckoning,” CTV News, January 1, 2021. Accessed March 21, 2021.

¹⁵ Ellen Goddard. "The impact of COVID‐19 on food retail and food service in Canada: A second assessment." Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie 69, no. 2 (2021): 171.

¹⁶ Elisha Dacey. “A list of Winnipeg restaurants offering grocery pick up and delivery service.” Global News, April 23, 2020. Accessed June 24, 2021.

¹⁷ Diversity Food Services Awards and Media . Accessed June 24, 2021.

¹⁸ Ellen Goddard. "The impact of COVID‐19 on food retail and food service in Canada: A second assessment." Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie 69, no. 2 (2021): 171.

¹⁹ Emily Newton. “Coronavirus will have lasting impact on restaurant industry,” FSN, February 16, 2021. Accessed March 21, 2021.

²⁰ Karon Liu. “Why do we miss indoor dining so much? It’s about a lot more than eating food on actual plates,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 16, 2021. Accessed June 24, 2021.

²¹ Andrew Coppolino. “Employees are leaving food service jobs just as things reopen,” CBC News, June 5, 2021. Accessed June 24, 2021; Corey Mintz. “Ontario’s restaurant crisis is a mental-health crisis too,” TVO, September 9, 2020. Accessed March 20, 2021.

²² Danielle Edwards. “Buy local mindset on the rise as consumers, distributors seek food security,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 13, 2021. Accessed July 26, 2021; Ellen Goddard. "The impact of COVID‐19 on food retail and food service in Canada: A second assessment." Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie 69, no. 2 (2021): 170.