A 100% local breakfast!

There is little need to introduce the Breakfast Club of Canada: since 1994, the organization’s programs have been feeding 79,500 children every day in schools across Quebec.

The breakfasts served are nutritious and follow Canada’s Food Guide, including one item from each food group in every meal. In Quebec, 72% of the foods used in the breakfasts come from local products—an impressive result. However, the Breakfast Club wanted to go even further by participating in the Les institutions mangent local! event.

“We encouraged our 500 partner schools across the province to prepare a breakfast made 100% with local products,” explains Claudine Dessureault, Purchasing and Inventory Advisor at the Breakfast Club of Canada.
“We suggested a list of foods certified by one of the Aliments du Québec certification labels that they already had on hand,” she adds, since these products are already part of the breakfast program. “We made it very simple, and it worked—many schools did it.”

In a second initiative, the Breakfast Club also mobilized its employees. Staff were invited to participate in a lunchtime activity by bringing a 100% Quebec-made lunch.

What initially seemed like an easy challenge caused some employees to pause when they realized their refrigerators contained very few local products. This sparked reflection and discussions about the importance of buying local.

“Some employees discovered they had very few Quebec-produced foods in their refrigerators and said they felt embarrassed. Many decided to go buy local products at grocery stores, which helped them become familiar with the Aliments du Québec logos. We therefore succeeded in raising awareness among our employees about buying local.”
— Claudine Dessureault, Purchasing and Inventory Advisor, Breakfast Club of Canada

A tasting table featuring fresh local products and the raffle of gift baskets filled with Quebec foods also helped change many employees’ perspectives on their consumption habits.

Foods that travel less

The discussion also touched on the price difference between locally produced foods and imported products—a difference that now appears less significant than before the pandemic, according to Dessureault.

“The shorter the transportation chain,” she says, “the more reasonable the price tends to be. Flexibility is a major advantage in purchasing, and we must consider the local supply available to us.”

“At equal price, we will definitely choose a Quebec product. By feeding thousands of children every day, we support sustainable eating within a local economy, and that carries significant weight. These values are shared by our donors and our schools. We will continue in this direction.”

The Breakfast Club believes participation from schools and employees—although strong—could have been even greater if the start of the school year had not been affected by labor shortages and a lack of volunteers. For this reason, schools were not asked to complete a survey that could have helped measure the impact of the activity.

“At the beginning of the school year,” Dessureault explains, “the staffing shortages affecting schools across the province and the need to re-establish school routines made it difficult for school administrations to add more responsibilities.”

Visits to schools by the Breakfast Club’s coordinators, which had been suspended since the beginning of the pandemic, have now resumed.

The organization’s goal—already reaching 72% local products in its breakfasts—is to stay on course, even as food prices continue to rise and its purchasing power remains unchanged.

The “Les institutions mangent local!” event is an initiative of the Aliments du Québec au menu program (developed by Aliments du Québec and Équiterre, with the support of the Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) in collaboration with the 100% Local Challenge.

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