Mona Grenier collects donated bread for Vancouver community pantries. Through the TikTok account @interruptingchicken, she has amassed thousands of followers in just a few months who follow along as she stocks the pantries.Jackie Dives/The Globe and Mail
Every Saturday morning, Mona Grenier goes to a grocery store in her neighbourhood to collect bread that would otherwise be thrown away. She drives to four community pantries and fridges located in different areas of Vancouver and fills them with the donated bread and other items sent to her by her TikTok followers.
Ms. Grenier’s TikTok account, @interruptingchicken, which she started only three months ago, has more than 30,000 followers, and is growing every day. Ms. Grenier is using the platform to educate people on food insecurity, and she does this by sharing the ins and outs of stocking community pantries and fridges.
Not only does she give daily updates on the status of the pantries, sharing with her followers what new items she is adding and how she organizes and cleans them, she also does “experiments” to determine which food is the most popular. One time, she pitted proteins such as peanut butter, beans, tuna and tofu against each other, stocking a pantry with these items and asking her followers to guess which would be taken first (tuna for the win!). She has also similarly tested the popularity of varieties of canned vegetables and cake mixes.
Ms. Grenier has engaged people in other ways, too. She shared her struggle with a continuing feud with raccoons, who until recently had been getting into the pantries and destroying items. Using suggestions from her followers, she constructed new, more secure doors to keep the critters out. She also takes followers’ suggestions on what new items to add to the pantries and has set up an Amazon account so people can buy items to donate themselves, which will then get shipped to her.
If you’re wondering if Ms. Grenier ever dips into the pantries herself, her honest answer is “yes.” Partaking herself helps reduce the stigma associated with using the pantry, she says.
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