Downtown Eastside (DTES) Kitchen Tables Project

The goal of the Downtown Eastside Kitchen Tables Project is to reform the quality, nutritional impact, abundance and delivery of food in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES). That means, the Right of Downtown Eastside residents to secure water and abundant, local, fresh and nutritious food, available across the DTES and delivered in a dignified manner, while creating jobs for residents facing barriers to traditional employment.

The DTES Kitchen Tables Project, a program of the Potluck Café Society, was established in 2009 to meet the community’s urgent need for abundant, accessible, quality nutrition by reforming the DTES neighbourhood’s current unsustainable charitable food system. The majority of DTES residents live in material poverty with 5,000 underhoused and more than 700 homeless. The majority of food currently available is high in sugars/carbohydrates and low in protein and fresh fruits/vegetables. Food providers have limited means to purchase food and the quality of donated food rarely responds to the food needs of nutritionally vulnerable residents often living with compromised immune systems and/or mental health challenges, substance use, Hepatitis C, Diabetes and HIV/AIDS. The DTES Kitchen Tables Project works collaboratively with residents, food and service providers, growers and farmers, health care workers, policy makers, food and beverage industry professionals and researchers to develop a DTES Food System for procuring, preparing, processing and delivering healthy food to community members of all ages and ancestries. The DTES Kitchen Tables Project is rooted in a Community Economic Development approach which creates meaningful jobs for DTES residents through the food system, at a living wage and with employment life skills supports.