Winnipeg bakery's pay-it-forward program puts bread in hands of those who can't afford it
'We have the opportunity to be very creative in how we support each other,' says Eadha Bread owner Cora Wiens
A man walks into Eadha Bread in Winnipeg's West End, where he pulls a grey post-it note from a bulletin board and places it down next to the register. Staff hand him some fresh-baked goods and he heads out.
That customer, who visited the shop Thursday morning, joined the people who are making use of a pay-it-forward voucher program that's been running at the Ellice Avenue sourdough bakery since August.
Customers who buy products can also pre-purchase vouchers that patrons who couldn't otherwise afford items then exchange for baked goods.
"Within the context of white supremacy and colonization and systemic poverty, as well as gentrification in the West End, we have the opportunity to be very creative in how we support each other," said Eadha owner Cora Wiens.
"The voucher program allows for everybody to access the products that we're selling."
In May 2018, Wiens opened the small shop, which she says is the only bakery in Winnipeg to exclusively sell fermented sourdough culture products, including cookies and cakes.
Wiens and the people she employs share similar values, and those values are displayed prominently in the store. A rainbow flag hangs in the window, and there are several signs on the walls explaining the shop is a safe space where discriminatory views won't be tolerated.
"We're explicitly queer, anti-racist and decolonial in the bakery," said Wiens. "Those are politics I identify with personally and the bakery is an opportunity for my politics and the politics of people who work here to be amplified."
Those politics also include a desire to build community in the West End, and help out those in the neighbourhood who are struggling financially.
In the city's North End, not far from Eadha, another local business shares that same desire to lend a helping hand.
In June, the owners of SFC Pizzeria on Salter Street near Selkirk Avenue started their own pay-it-forward program, giving customers without money an option to exchange similar post-it style vouchers for food.
The model gives those who can afford to help out a chance to do so, SFC Pizzeria owner Vikas Sanger told CBC News in June.
"In our culture … if somebody comes and asks for food, we cannot deny them, because they are hungry," said Sanger, who came to Canada from India in 2010. "But I just opened a new restaurant, so I cannot afford to [give] everything free."
The voucher system was a good solution, he said.
At Eadha, the voucher program was a natural extension of past fundraisers the bakery has undertaken in the past, said Wiens.
"Because we're a very new and very small business, we don't have the capacity to donate large amounts of product or money," said Wiens.
"This is an option that involves all of our customers, all of our potential customers to collaborate with us to make sure that everybody who wants to be eating our products [is] able to."
The program has only been up and running since last month, but Wiens said several times every day, customers either pay for vouchers or use them for food.
"People are very on board for the whole thing, so we have, regularly, vouchers going up, vouchers coming down, and everybody who talks to us about it is really, really happy to have the opportunity to participate," said Wiens.
"The response has been largely, 'What a great idea. I am surprised we haven't thought about this before.'"
Wiens explains the voucher program:
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