The Next-Gen Dep Owners Keeping Montreal Corner Stores Alive

What do rat traps, cigs, and Cheetos have in common? Browse through the aisles of your local dep and you can probably find all three. A student apartment complex might have also made the cut. Sure, the traps are probably behind a dusty display of phone cases nobody’s touched since 2019—but that’s the dep for you.

Montreal's dépanneur: corner store, neighbourhood anchor, and a Quebec institution unto itself. And yet, by every rational measure, it shouldn't be surviving. Margins are thin and convenience chains have cornered the market. The next generation has options. So who’s actually opening these things in 2026, and why?

Business as usual

The man behind the counter at Dépanneur Bon-Voisin on Queen Mary didn't mince words and didn’t offer his name. Terrible business, he says. He’s been co-owner since 2004, which makes him something of a veteran in an industry that chews people up. Margins were already thin before COVID shaved them down further. Theft gets absorbed quietly: report it to insurance and watch your premiums climb. His son studied, then left for the States. There is no plan for what comes next. He didn't seem troubled by this. He said his story was normal, uninteresting, even.

He's not wrong, and he's certainly not alone. Some 550 dépanneurs and small grocers closed across Quebec in under two years. Of the roughly 5,000 deps still operating in the province, estimates put the number of truly independent, owner-operated stores at around 400. The old business model of selling cigarettes, lottery tickets, and beer is being regulated toward extinction. Tobacco margins are collapsing, vaping restrictions are tightening, and supermarkets now sell beer and wine, most recently prêt-à-boire cocktails.

The dep's structural advantages, the ones that built the industry out of a 1970 exemption law, are quietly being dismantled one product category at a time.

More than convenient

Tsegay has been running his NDG store Dépanneur B&B on Sherbrooke for almost 10 years. Walk in expecting king cans and scratch tickets and you'll find those, but the true find—one you won’t come across anywhere else in Montreal—is fresh injera, made in-house, alongside teff flour, berbere, niter kibbeh spice blends, and raw coffee for home roasting.

His Ethiopian and Eritrean clientele comes from Laval, from Rosemont, from across the city. Some call ahead for special orders. "I have been looking for a place like this for years," one early Yelp reviewer wrote in 2021.

"I grew up in this kind of setting," Tsegay said, gesturing at nothing in particular and everything at once. Back home in Eritrea, his father ran a shop. They call it a duka: same idea, different country. He’s not planning to keep the convenience shelves stocked forever, but the injera isn’t going anywhere.

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Business as usual

The dep's structural advantages, the ones that built the industry out of a 1970 exemption law, are quietly being dismantled one product category at a time.