It's a sunny afternoon at the Squire Jehagan Outreach Center in Fayetteville, and Wannalitha Anderson is wheeling a cart of goods outside. She joins Monique Jones, the director of outreach and community engagement at the historic St. James Missionary Baptist Church. A major part of that outreach is running the operations of its food pantry. Anderson is taking those goods from her cart into a locker system, and Jones reads off the order.
“You'll see on this order that there's a request for dry black beans, mixed fruit cup, white quinoa, dried diced fruit cups, assorted chips, assorted fruit, assorted vegetables, assorted proteins, mac and cheese, canned tuna, canned diced peaches, applesauce, elbow pasta, liquid dish soap, bread and cheesy dinner — so you can see a variety of not just food items, but also household items like the dish soap.”
These lockers are massive — four rows of four. The whole structure stands about 8 feet tall, about 11 feet wide. It's simultaneously complex and simple. Anderson holds a standard piece of paper sideways, double-checking the order before entering the details into the touchscreen in the center of the lockers.
“So we enter the associate code that we've received, then we enter the delivery code that is associated with this order, and once she loads this locker, it immediately sends a text message or email, whichever one they chose.”
“I'm going to have you come over just for a minute. I want you to tell me what you feel.”
“Oh yeah. This is literally like a crisper drawer in a fridge.”
Jones says the climate control on these lockers can be set per row — heated for a hot meal, ambient for shelf-stable goods, cold for refrigerated goods, and freezer for frozen foods. These smart food lockers are available here in Fayetteville thanks to grant funding from Walmart and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Pearl McElfish is the director of the Institute for Community Health Innovation at UAMS. She says working with a faith-based partner like St. James to install these smart food lockers is important for many reasons.
“One, they are in the heart of the community and are just such an incredible force in the community. And also, they were able to help us consider what would it look like if we had a food access point that was available 24 hours a day.”
That 24-hour availability — that's critical to the project. The typical hours of the food pantry are Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. But if you can't come during that time frame, you can still get food through the food pantry. The food pantry has an online platform where clients can choose what foods they want on their order — that's the sheet of paper she was reading from earlier.
Jones says one demographic she sees taking advantage of the lockers is the ALICE community — Asset Limited, Income Constrained and Employed.
“I want you to remember the last E of ALICE — these are employed individuals. I'm talking about people that work specifically at the high school and nutrition department. I'm talking about teachers. I'm talking about people that work in governmental jobs that will come here and say, hey, I have a paycheck, I'm doing really good, but I'm still struggling on my food portion. How can I help? And we will connect them to the food storage locker.”
Jones says when it comes to the cultural and religious diversity in the region, allowing clients to choose what they prefer to eat means the food they receive gets eaten.
“I am trying to empower that, and I'm trying to empower that with dignity. So that's where that client choice — I'm not giving you something. You're actually getting to choose what you prefer and your family prefers to eat. We're also trying to prevent food waste. So if I — I don't even eat chicken. I mean, chicken ramen. But if somebody else does and that's what they prefer, then that's good.”
McElfish says allowing choice and allowing pickup at your convenience means people are significantly more likely to eat produce. In fact, 75% of the participants in UAMS's study reported an increase in fruits and vegetables.
“Providing that access really allowed people who needed it the most to have access to healthy foods. I think there's also a certain degree of humanity about it — that they can choose among some items what they will eat, they can schedule the pickup. I do think that it gives some autonomy and some humanity to addressing food insecurity.
Moore: It's funny you use the word humanity, because you're talking about a bit of a self-checkout kind of situation here. There doesn't have to be a lot of personal interaction. So humanity, for you, I think the way you're using that term is more of just like — I'm a human who needs things.
“You make a good point. It really is maybe double-sided in that often people do get a lot of wraparound services at a food pantry — things like help with filling out Medicaid applications and help with housing. But at the same time, if they're not able to come in at that time, then the humanity is accessed in not alienating someone or not disallowing someone the services they need simply because they can't show up at a certain time.”
We saw that humanity in action as Anderson continued to load more lockers.
“Some of these families are way bigger than what's on the paper. We've got families of eight that are eating out of these lockers, and sometimes I double their food. I know these people and I work with them so much. I know who needs extra. I know who doesn't ask for toilet tissue but needs it. I know who needs paper towels, diapers, wipes. So if it's a big family, I try to double up when I can, when we have extras. Sometimes it will take up multiple lockers, but I'm just more concerned about making sure these people have enough food to get them through the week. It's going a long way. These lockers are feeding a lot of people.”
Moore: When you think about the personal relationship that you have with these folks — how personal are you able to get in the five, 10 minutes you get to see them on a regular basis?
“Honestly, you don't get to see the people in the lockers unless they're picking up. But what I have done is started reaching out to them and calling them when they put certain comments in, or I do surveys as well. Since we don't get to interact with them in our DoorDash participants, we survey a lot. That's how I figured out we needed more dairy — they're asking for more dairy. So I wrote a grant and I got that for them. More nutritious food, more recipes. Even though we don't see each other, we're still in constant communication because this is solely for them. We want to make sure that we're providing just the daily essentials to make their life better. That's one less thing they have to stress about.”
There are some known drawbacks to the lockers. One, it's not immediate — if you place an order on Monday, the order won't be ready for pickup until Wednesday. And if you don't have a smartphone or you just don't feel equipped to use the technology, that's a barrier, too.
KUAF has previously reported on a more low-fi version of this concept: friendly fridges. McElfish is encouraged by the generosity of her neighbors.
“When I see the little food pantries or the friendly fridges, I put things in mine every week and love just having that neighbor-helping-neighbor component. We absolutely need the large food pantries and this kind of more industrialized system for food insecurity. Whether it is the food lockers or the little food pantries we see at local schools or a refrigerator plugged in outside, all of those have this consistent theme — we live in Northwest Arkansas where many people have access to food. We want all of our neighbors to have not just food, but healthy food.”
“We have a friendly fridge up front. We can't just assume everybody has access to Wi-Fi, a smartphone and can place orders and knows how to get on emails. I actually teach computer classes to some of our elderly community, so telling them scan this QR code and do this — they're thinking, what is a QR code? Having a friendly fridge takes away the stigma around I don't really understand technology — and oh, you have some fruits and vegetables and sandwiches and milk out in the fridge, I can just stop by and pick those up. The great thing is they also have the number for Apple Seeds, so if they feel like it's empty, they can reach out and say, hey, I went by this friendly fridge at the Squire Center and there's no food in there, and they can come back over and fill it.”
This location in Fayetteville is a pilot for a program that both UAMS and St. James hope will grow. Jones says she wants to see more lockers in Fayetteville and has been trying to figure out how to get one on the west side of town. McElfish is thinking bigger.
“I think also in rural communities, because it's great in Northwest Arkansas. But when you think about a place like Huntsville or Berryville, the ability to get to a food pantry when it's open becomes much more difficult. I think that this could really be a wonderful solution for rural areas.”
You can find more details about how to support the Squire Jahagan Outreach Center here.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
