A taste of kindness: Saskatoon restaurant owner serving high-end meals to city’s homeless

Food fit for a king is being served to those in need of a hot meal, thanks to a local Saskatoon restaurant owner.

Rachel Smith said she’s noticed a big increase in overdoses and social disruption around her business, Bannock Express, since the closure of Prairie Harm Reduction last month.

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Smith said she’s seen a lot of people hanging around and sleeping in alleys around the restaurant on 22nd Street West. She said she’s witnessed a few overdoses as well, and has intervened and administered Narcan.

She said it seems like the number of overdoses around her restaurant has doubled since the closure of the supervised drug consumption site.

“I can’t let people suffer,” she said. “They could pass away. And it’s really scary, but it’s necessary.”

She said intervening can sometimes be scary.

“Some of the people… when they wake up, they could be a little bit angry or not expecting what’s happening to them,” Smith explained, adding that she calls emergency services to help in those situations.

“Narcan, it works pretty fast with some people, and with other people, it doesn’t work as much,” she said.

Smith is no stranger to helping people in her community.

“I always run out of food,” she said, explaining that she frequently offers people soup and bannock if they appear to need a good meal.

But lately, Smith said she felt like she wanted to do something more substantial. After getting inspiration from videos online, she decided to test out a plan to distribute gourmet bannock burgers to those in need.

“The community really responded,” she said. “I got a whole bunch of donations, and I actually tripled my goal.”

Rachel Smith handed out 100 meals with the SAGE Clan Patrol last week, and another 75 meals on May 2, 2026. (Rachel Smith/Submitted)

Having posted online about her goal to serve high-quality meals to her community in the wake of Prairie Harm’s closure, Smith said she was ecstatic to see how enthusiastic people were to support her efforts.

“When I woke up the next morning and I saw how many people donated, I hightailed it to Wholesale Club,” she said.

“I went and got all the ingredients, and I made it happen that very day.”

Smith said her bill was about $750 for the first hundred meals. She also got offers of additional food donations, like cookies, to hand out along with the meals.

Smith then teamed up with SAGE Clan Patrol, a local community patrol group, to distribute the meals to people in Saskatoon’s downtown core, the city’s west side and both 22nd and 21st streets. The group also handed out meals around the Prairie Harm Reduction’s former site on 20th Street West.

“They just really came together in all sorts of ways, which is really inspiring, and I’m just grateful for that,” Smith shared.

“Ever since I started my business, we give back to the community and we support the community, even if they are suffering. This is when they need it most.”

With a full crew in the kitchen, she said they managed to prepare and then distribute 100 bannock burger meals last week, complete with macaroni salad and sodas.

“People were so happy,” Smith said. “We had bacon on those burgers… They had the big smiles on their face as soon as they found out.”

Smith said she had her own experience with homelessness after aging out of foster care in an unfamiliar province.

“I have that compassion for people,” she said, “and it’s written in the imprint of my business.”

On Saturday, Smith went out a second time, distributing extra-large bannock tacos to 75 people in the community.

Smith said the donations have been so generous that she’s planning to continue distributing meals for the next few weeks, around 75 at a time.

“People are still wanting to donate, and the community coming together and having us hand out these gourmet meals,” she said.

“It’s just amazing.”

SAGE Clan Patrol has also restocked Smith with a box of Narcan.

Saskatoon mayor says service providers working harder after Prairie Harm closure

“There’s no question that our fire department is under more pressure than usual,” Saskatoon Mayor Cynthia Block said on Friday.

“At the same time, services that are being removed from our community.”

Block said the result is that service providers are having to work harder “to be able to fill those gaps.”

The mayor said she’s extremely concerned about the growing number of overdoses happening in the city. She said the number of cases is difficult for emergency workers in the city, as responding to the calls fatiguing, both physically and mentally.

“It’s really tough to go out there every day to try and save people’s lives, and is not always successful,” Block said.

The mayor said there’s work to do when it comes to figuring out how to support people in need in Saskatoon.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct a misspelling of Smith’s first name.