The Stop was founded in the early 1980s at St Stephen in the Fields Parish, as one of Canada's first food banks. In common with the food bank sector, it was established as a temporary, emergency entity to address what was thought to be a temporary problem of food insecurity. Food insecurity, however, has only increased, to the point in 2014 where Toronto has an estimated child poverty rate of 30%. Food banks have mushroomed as has demand for their services. Hence former CEO Nick Saul's conviction that food banks have in many ways become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, insofar as their very existence as a bandaid measure to food poverty masks the need to tackle the underlying structural causes: high housing costs, low welfare benefit rates, poverty wages and precarious employment, amongst others. This is why he and his team set about the transformation of the Stop into an empowerment-focused community food centre, beginning in the early 2000s. 

The Stop has two locations: a main office at 1884 Davenport Road where staff provide frontline services to the local community, including a drop-in, food bank, perinatal program, community action program, bake ovens and markets, community cooking, community advocacy, sustainable food systems education and urban agriculture. The Stop’s Green Barn, located in the Wychwood Barns at 601 Christie Street, is a sustainable food production and education centre that houses a state-of-the-art greenhouse, food systems education programs, a sheltered garden, our Global Roots Garden, community bake oven and compost demonstration centre.

The Stop receives its funding from a range of sources, as follows (2014): 

In the first years of its transformation to becoming a Community Food Centre, the Stop experienced a number of internal conflicts with long-time volunteers, who were comfortable with the traditional charity approach to emergency food relief, and didn't like the new approach that Nick Saul was trying to achieve. These tensions led to some volunteers leaving, but they did not deflect the organisation from its transition; the strong support of the Board for Saul's vision was important in this being achieved.

The Stop has shown that the traditional food bank charity model does not have to replicated and further entrenched, year after year. The vision of Nick Saul, founded on the conviction that the human right to adequate food can be made real and meaningful for every person, has driven forward a transformation in how the emergency food relief sector can conceive of itself. Everywhere across the global north, demand for food banks is rising, as inequality increases and austerity budgets cut further into public services and welfare benefit provision. The need for powerful advocacy from those most affected by these processes is overwhelming, and the Stop has shown how this can be achieved. Its model is eminently transferable to any culturally and socio-economically comparable context, especially the United States, Britain and Australia.

http://www.tdin.ca/resources/show_resource.cfm?id=153