Dalda's Reopens with a 10% Discount on Healthy Items for TL Residents & Staff 

Dated 4.2.2021
 

The Healthy Corner Store Coalition (HCSC) is excited to announce Dalda's Community Market, located on the ground-floor of 222 Taylor, is now offering a 10% discount on all healthy items for Tenderloin residents and staff!

If you live or work in the TL, you're welcome to join the program! All you have to do is tell the cashier at Dalda's that you live or work in the neighborhood, provide a phone number, and you'll be added to the program. 

Driven by community outreach and feedback, the Healthy Foods Discount Program will remove one of the major barriers preventing people earning lower wages from accessing nutritious food: cost.

TL residents have fought hard to have foods that lower chronic diseases like diabetes, improve mental health, and meet diverse cultural needs in their neighborhood and not a bus ride or uphill walk away. This work is a sign of how TL neighbors care for one another, no matter what.

The HCSC, an initiative originally formed by Vietnamese and South Asian youth living in the TL now known as the South Asian Development Center, became a TNDC program in 2017. The program focuses on resourcing and supporting Food Justice Leaders, residents who want to increase access to and awareness about healthy foods in their neighborhoods including the Tenderloin, Bayview, and Ingleside.

Food Justice Leaders build relationships with 1-2 stores in their neighborhood and collaborate on ways to maintain produce quality, help stores stock culturally-relevant foods, and engage the community with food tastings in pre-pandemic times. 

Food Justice Leaders' community outreach was essential to Dalda's expansion. With more space, "Bill" Satwinder Multani, owner of Dalda's, can now offer more fresh produce and healthier options with three produce cases and dry bins, healthy grab-and-go meals like sandwiches and salads, and culturally-relevant options such as Halal and Kosher meats.

Kallisto Khan (she/her), a Food Justice Leader for the last six years, said Dalda's is phenomenal in its new space, and shared that Bill goes above and beyond to supply produce. Kallisto also goes above and beyond to connect her friends and neighbors to new foods. She finds and creates fun, healthy recipes that are easy to make in homes with limited kitchens like Single Room Occupancy (SROs) homes which are very common in the TL. 

Because it's your neighborhood, you just don't give up," said Kallisto, long-time HCSC Food Justice Leader. "For us, it's about changing the landscape of the neighborhood from a food desert to a place full of food options." 

The fight for equitable access to healthy affordable food is based in a wider systemic problem rooted in racism and underfunding neighborhoods with less wealth. When we invest in neighborhoods and communities with less wealth and resources, we invest in people's health and well-being, and that's how we can help our neighbors thrive. 

Thanks to Bill and his family, TL advocates, Food Justice Leaders and HCSC, TNDC staff, Healthy Retail SF, and SF Office of Economic and Workforce Development who made this possible!