THE EVOLUTION OF DÉPANNEURS
Many get creative in order to survive
Two pretty girls with long blond hair are sitting at Dépanneur Le Pick-Up’s crowded counter, eating raspberry pie and drinking coffee. A giant pink comb hangs on the wood-panelled wall behind them.
“I think that was picked up at a flea market somewhere,” explains chef Marc Giroux from behind the counter. He is piling kaiser buns with faux pulled pork, a vegetarian favourite, and topping them with dollops of coleslaw, during the busy lunch hour rush at the tiny dépanneur on Waverly St. in Little Italy.
The 33-year-old trained chef has worked at Sousbois, Hvor and Grinder, some of Montreal’s swankier establishments. But the top-rated foodie hot spot where he’s working now has some unusual features.
Giroux gestures toward the shelves behind the girls. They are stocked with toilet paper and canned goods. “That stuff moves less,” he says with a grin, noting that even chips and beer don’t fly out of the store as quickly as takeout orders.
And then there’s the clientele. Dépanneur Le Pick-Up is not only frequented by the hipsters who keep streaming through the front door, but also by blue-collar workers from nearby meat-packing plants and garages — people who have been coming to this spot, once dubbed Maurice’s Snack Bar, for generations.
“It used to be a place where you could eat and buy your sewing needles,” says Giroux, motioning toward the wall above the cash register, where a pair of old needles are displayed.
Dépanneur Le Pick-Up has been around for a decade in its current incarnation. And while its shabbychic decor includes a pink disco ball and Hawaiian-themed wallpaper that situates it squarely in the happening present, the place hasn’t actually changed all that much.
Dépanneurs as we know them today evolved from little corner restaurants and grocery stores into the hugely successful and now more familiar business model coopted by chains like Couche-Tard.
But the future is looking rocky for the independently owned neighbourhood corner store, with its standard fare of milk, beer and assorted groceries.
Over the last few decades, 30 per cent of dépanneurs in Quebec have disappeared, according to the Quebec Convenience Store Association (QCSA), which has been monitoring the industry since 1990, when there were 10,000 dépanneurs in the province. Today, there are around 7,000.
QCSA president Michel Gadbois says we are now seeing diversification as a result of pressure from concentration and overregulation of the market.
Dépanneur owners are beginning to rely on unique specialties to draw customers, with many going beyond the typical offerings of homemade samosas or Jamaican patties. Sushi Dépanneur on MontRoyal Ave. E. is more of a restaurant than a corner store. Le Petit Dep on St-Paul St. W. is a cross between a gift shop, chic gourmet café and convenience store.
At Marché G Lalime, a few blocks away from Le Pick-Up on St-Laurent Blvd., business is also booming.
The dépanneur is so popular, it sells T-shirts and baseball caps emblazoned with its logo.
“I even saw one on a guy downtown,” says Maximilien Lalime. The 31-year-old plans to take over the dépanneur once his father retires. He says he is aware that a lot of dépanneurs are failing, but he’s not worried about the family business.
When the chain grocery store Marché Extra opened across the street, Lalime says, his parents and his aunts, uncles and cousins, who all work alongside him in the store, were briefly concerned. “But we are not suffering,” he says.
Like its neighbour across the street, the sleek, upscale dépanneur sells dish detergent, batteries, alcohol and boxes of Kraft Dinner. But you can’t get the unique taste of its legendary top seller, the Club Matin, a breakfast sandwich sold at the bargain price of $2.99, anywhere else in the city.
The dépanneur specializes in homemade takeout food, and Lalime says their tourtières, pies and freshly made sandwiches keep customers coming back.
Montreal journalist Judith Lussier, whose 2010 book Sacré Dépanneur! chronicles the evolution of the dépanneur, says the convenience stores started off as creative hybrid spaces just like Marché G Lalime.
The first dépanneur opened at the corner of St-Zotique St. and 1ere Ave. in 1970, according to Lussier. Grocer Paul-Émile Maheu’s store was failing. He was the first to take advantage of Bill 24; the new law regulating store hours allowed businesses with few employees to stay open evenings and Sundays, a privilege that had once been reserved for country stores. Maheu cut staff and specialty counter services, and worked long hours alone.
Maheu also hung a new sign on his store, naming it Dépanneur Saint-Zotique. The word “dépanneur” was new at the time, Maheu’s son Gaétan told Lussier. At first customers didn’t understand why his father had chosen a word derived from “dépanner” (to help out). But they soon realized how helpful it was to be able to pop into the store on a Sunday and buy milk and bread.
Maheu’s neighbour was the next person to open a dépanneur, and also adopted the name. By the 1980s, we had entered “the golden age of dépanneurs,” according to Lussier, who says there was one on almost every street corner in Montreal.
Lussier explains that dépanneurs were a testament to all the changes that occurred during the Quiet Revolution. They opened on Sundays at a time when the day was still considered sacred, and they sold alcohol on the weekend. “It shocked people,” she says.
Key to the stores’ success were the laws regulating alcohol sales, which appear at first glance to be curiously applied in Quebec, Lussier notes in her book. Ontarians are regularly shocked, she writes, that in Quebec you can buy beer at the same place you fill your car with gas — but you can’t buy it in a métro dépanneur.
In 1921, when the Quebec Liquor Commission was created, grocery stores lost the right to sell alcohol. Many stores closed as a result, and a lot of families lost their livelihoods. Lussier says the Quebec beer workers’ union fought hard against the law, and in the 1970s stores that had a set minimum amount of groceries in stock were granted beer licences, as well as the right to sell certain brands of SAQ sanctioned wine.
But things have changed over the last 15 years. Gadbois says this is because the price index (the average price of all products sold in a store) has risen by 12 per cent while the cost of regulation (the amount needed to buy required permits) has increased by a whopping 133 per cent. Nowadays, 52 types of licences and permits are necessary to operate a dépanneur.
Chain dépanneurs have cornered the market since the heyday of the convenience store, but there are signs that even the giants are struggling. In March, Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., a Quebec-based success story and now the largest independently owned convenience store operator in North America, saw its share prices fall 6.5 per cent. They have dropped a total of nine per cent this year.
Analysts have pointed their fingers at the company’s rapid expansion, the shaky U.S. economy and fuel prices. However, they’ve also attributed sluggish sales to an increase in competition from supermarket chains and fast-food restaurants, whose immense purchasing power is walloping that of convenience stores in the price wars.
Gadbois says that here at home, “the government is killing the goose that lays the golden egg.” Dépanneurs bring in $4 billion a year in lottery, alcohol and cigarette taxes, which they pay to the provincial and federal governments. But according to Gadbois, for every dollar a retailer puts in their pocket, they shell out $18 to the government.
As a result of these pressures, more and more Montreal dépanneurs have returned to their origins, transforming into places that facilitate a favoured Canadian vice: beer drinking.
Capitalizing on the trend of microbrewed beer, dépanneurs that sell hundreds of kinds of craft beer are sprouting up behind dusty, sticker-laden store windows all over the city.
The businesses have found innovative ways to skirt the law that obliges stores to have $3,000 worth of merchandise other than alcohol for sale. Many, such as Dépanneur Peluso on Rachel St. E., sell a smaller assortment of expensive meats and cheeses in order to meet licensing requirements.
At Dépanneur AS in the Plateau, Annie DeMontigny says that while the rows of craft beer draw customers into the store, it is still at heart a neighbourhood dépanneur.
Pascale Terrasi agrees. The 21-year-old is doing a roofing job in the area and has popped into the store just to say hi. He says his whole family is fond of the store’s owner, who has had the business for 40 years. “She used to give me free doughnuts when I was a kid.”
DeMontigny has been working full time at Dépanneur AS for eight years. She calls customers by nicknames she has made up for them. “It plays well — not everyone has that,” she says with a wink.
At Marché Westmount, on Sherbrooke St. near Claremont Ave., towering green plants and buckets of tulips and roses are squeezed between rows of shelves filled with jam, cereal and soup. The dépanneur is about three-quarters flowers and one-quarter groceries.
Hoo Duk Cho, known affectionately to neighbourhood residents as Mrs. Kim, is making bouquets while she sits behind the cash register.
Cho says when she bought the store 30 years ago it was a grocery store that only sold a few flowers. She says she realized right away her family would never survive selling groceries alone and that she had “no choice” but to buy more flowers.
Photos of her three school-aged grandchildren are displayed behind the cash register, where Cho still works 10-hour days, seven days a week.
She says the flower business is stressful because her fresh flowers die if they aren’t sold, and there’s a steep rent to pay for the store, as well as for her third-floor apartment in the building above. “But I like it. I’m not complaining,” she says.
Cho’s store is one of the few long-term survivors on a tough commercial strip that has seen a lot of businesses come and go in the last few years.
Lussier says dépanneurs have always showcased the forward thinking and creativity of small business owners. They are a Quebec institution, she says, but she admits she has mixed feelings about their disappearance.
In many poorer neighbourhoods, a dépanneur’s scant offerings are the only food available. When dépanneurs are replaced by chain grocery stores that offer healthier fare, even if they are located farther away, “it’s hard not to see something good in that,” says Lussier.