Soaring food costs leave local Toronto meal delivery services struggling, many say

As food prices continue to rise across the country, many local Toronto meal delivery services say they're struggling to make ends meet. 

The cost of food, along with inflation and the cost of living, has risen steadily since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The price crunch has put immense pressure on organizations that deliver meals to Torontonians in need, many of which are specifically for seniors and those recovering from hospital stays, several such organizations told CBC News. 

Gurbeen Bhasin is the executive director and founder of Aangen, a community service organization based at Epiphany and St. Mark Anglican Church in the city's Parkdale neighbourhood.

"We've had to make incredible amounts of changes," Bhasin said. "We're stuck between high prices and labour costs going up."

Prior to the pandemic, the organization raised funds in part by catering. The funds helped offset the cost of providing meals to homeless shelters. The catering stopped during the pandemic, as the organization switched its focus to making affordable dehydrated meals designed to include half of a person's daily nutrients in one serving.

But Bhasin says they've had to start catering again to keep the cost of the dehydrated meals as low as possible but rising food and labour costs mean the cost of those meals has gone up too.

"Our raw material costs have jumped up by 60 per cent," she said. "We were selling meals for $5 a unit and we were literally breaking even and now … we're at $7 and $8 a unit."

Meal delivery services aren't the only ones feeling the pinch.

Last week, Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank reported that its monthly number of clients has more than quadrupled since the pre-pandemic period. CEO Neil Hetherington said the charity now spends $1.8 million a month on food, while before the onset of COVID-19, it spent $1.5 million a year. 

Shahid Khan, the executive director of Muslim Welfare Canada, told CBC Toronto that recent months have been hard on his organization, which operates a number of food banks and delivery services in the city.

"The prices are way up, in some cases almost double," he said. "Sometimes 60 per cent and 40 per cent. For example, the rice was only $3.35, now it's $5.75. And cooking oil — very expensive — used to be only $3.50, now it's about $6."

For their seniors' meal delivery service, the meals used to cost $8. They're now up to $10, he said. 

As a result, the organization has had to put a bigger emphasis on asking for donations from other organizations and the public. 

"We thank our donors," Khan said. "They're really helping us."