First Pay-What-You-Can Grocery Store Opens In Toronto

Chef Jagger Gordon expands Feed It Forward to open supermarket

Feed It Forward aims to help those with food insecurities afford nutritious food by deterring restaurants and supermarkets from wasting edible food. The brainchild of Chef Jagger Gordon, Feed It Forward has opened the world’s first pay-what-you-can grocery store at 3324 Dundas Street West in The Junction.

Gordon opened Toronto’s first subsidized pay-what-you-can restaurant, The Soup Bar, last year in an effort to help families and individuals access healthy meals at a nominal cost.

The store will feature a bakery, coffee shop, and soup bar, while stocking produce from Feed It Forward’s farm, Greenwood Farms, in Whitby.

Customers visiting Gordon’s Feed It Forward store will be able to pay what they can for food. Patrons unable to pay anything will still have access to nutritious food at no cost. Visitors are also welcome to “pay it forward” for someone else in need.

Additionally, the store will feature some public space, a living wall, and a community garden where volunteers are encouraged to grow vegetables for the community.

“I started reaching out to certain restaurants, asking for their trimmings, their ends, their rotating cycle of what’s on their tables, and I started packaging that up,” explained Gordon last year after opening The Soup Bar. “And giving biweekly and weekly meals to families in crisis every day.”

It’s great to see Gordon expand his operation and help ease the burden of making healthy decisions for Toronto families.

image courtesy indie88.com