Finding ways to combat high northern prices

Two individuals in northern Ontario recently began initiatives to help bring lower food costs to the far north.
Wendy Kakekaspan of Fort Severn organized a semi-trailer to bring in supplies from Winnipeg for fellow community members while Joe Duncan of Muskrat Dam began a business out of Thunder Bay to ship food and other supplies up to northern communities.
In January, Kakekaspan said she was thinking of ways for the community to benefit from the winter road. In the past, she would travel with other community members in a truck to go shopping down south, usually in Winnipeg.
“A lot of people don’t have a truck, and I was just thinking, what if I just pay for a semi (trailer) and get the community to order stuff through a wholesale grocery store,” she said.
Kakekaspan visited or called other community members and gained a lot of support and willing participants.
Using the band council’s contacts, she reached a trucking company and wholesaler in Winnipeg.
About 43 community members committed to Kakekaspan’s initiative by pre-paying their orders in advance.
Initially, based on the trucking estimate, it would have cost more than $290 per person for the freight fees. But Kakekaspan held four bingos and raised $4,000 to help with the semi-trailer rental. It brought down the cost to less than $220 per person.
The community members ordered mostly dry goods such as flour, sugar, lard, juice, cooking oil, detergent, and toiletry items.
“The most basic items you need in the community,” Kakekaspan said, adding that the orders were made in bulk.
The First Nation helped with renting a semi with a cooler trailer, allowing meat orders to be made.
The total order of the food and supplies was over $40,000.
The shipments arrived on March 22 and 10-15 volunteers – including high school students in need of community hours – helped to sort out the orders.
Kakekaspan said when some community members backed out of ordering, she made additional orders.
“I made a community order – for those people who didn’t order anything, they had a chance again to buy stuff again here that came in,” she said. “Everything was gone within 24 hours.”
Kakekaspan said the idea to rent a semi-trailer arose due to the costs of food and items at the local store.
“It was because the stuff here is so expensive,” she said.
For instance, 10 kilograms of flour is about $50 locally. The wholesale store in Winnipeg sold the same size and brand for $7.50. Taking the freight into consideration, it cost $18 thanks to Kakekaspan’s initiative.
Similarly, 10 kg of sugar is $42 locally. With freight, it cost $22.24.
Duncan knows too well the high costs of food in the north. Through his past employment with a governmental organization, the 36-year-old has travelled to about 20 of the 35 fly-in communities in northern Ontario. He also lived in Muskrat Dam for about five years.
One thing he noticed in most of the communities was the lack of variety of products, particularly fresh products like produce.
“When I would fly out to the communities, nurses would ask me to bring romaine lettuce or fresh cheese,” he said. “From my experience in going up north, a lot of the fresh produce is not fresh. But it depends which community you’re in.”
Duncan would get requests from family members living in the north to send bulk items from Thunder Bay, something he also requested of family members when he lived up north.
Duncan noticed that grocery stores in Thunder Bay and Sioux Lookout had offered a service to ship groceries up north.
“And I thought, why can’t a Native person do it?” he said. “Why do we have to rely on people who have nothing to do with First Nations?”
The notion led Duncan to develop a business called Moccasin Delivery, which officially opened in late-March.
In preparing for the launch, Duncan worked for three months on designing the website (moccasindelivery.com), which features some of the products and services he offers.
He also established contacts with a wholesaler and an airline, the latter of which is offering flat-rate fees for bulk shipments.
For his services, Duncan is charging a flat-rate fee of $24.99.
For the products, he charges the same price as the wholesaler.
“There’s no mark up in that area,” he said. “It defeats the purpose when you are trying to sell a cheap product when you’re marking up the price yourself.”
And food is not the only item Moccasin Delivery will offer delivery services for.
Recalling his desire for certain products when he lived up north, Duncan is offering to ship up items from fast food and coffee businesses.
“Giving that option to order it or whatever, I’m just trying to provide another selection for the communities in the north,” he said.
Moccasin Delivery is still new, and thus Duncan has not received a lot of business so far. But he hopes word of his services will reach the north. The closure of the winter roads could help too.
“Hopefully, by June, we’ll definitely be building a positive, reliable, honest business up north. That’s my goal.”
Meanwhile, Kakekaspan is planning on organizing another initiative to rent a semi-trailer the next winter road season. She recently made a Facebook page for community members to offer product and store suggestions.
“For the first time doing this, it went really well,” she said. “The whole community got involved.”
She said there were hardly any damages to the items this year.
“Just pop,” she said, adding with a laugh: “So we’re not going to do pop orders next time.”