Dion Dawson

If you look historically at food responses, the pantry model has been unchanged since the 1950s.

Everywhere in places that looked like mine, it was inefficient.

It didn't champion quality or the end user experience.

And it just bothered me.

I'm Dion Dawson, founder and chief dreamer of Dion's Chicago Dream.

We're a nonprofit social enterprise that focuses on providing access to healthy food consistently, making sure that your zip code does not determine how long you live.

We deliver a 10 pound box of fresh fruits and vegetables to more than 4,300 households in the Chicagoland region per week.

It could be everything from a pineapple to different types of apples, citruses, Swiss chard, spinach, pomegranates.

Since 2020, we've provided a little over 3.5 million pounds of fresh produce that we've purchased, packed, and delivered.

And we've never charged any of our recipients to date.

Our produce and our quality is top notch.

We've never taken a single piece of donated produce.

We purchase everything.

It may cost us a little more, but that's fine.

You don't want to dictate what people think they deserve.

If we're thinking about people living longer, healthier lives, you want to give them the best opportunity to be healthy.

You can't do that with expiring food.

One of the things that we wanted to do a little different is make sure that we're talking to people.

We do a biweekly touch point where we collect scores in six different areas like ease of delivery, quality of produce, staff treatment, and even stress after delivery.

And so we can see that we're lowering stress levels daily by more than 80%.