GoodRoots Northwest installed the lockers at the start of the year. Bates is now the first college campus on the West Coast to have climate-controlled food lockers.
KING 5: Food lockers installed to help combat food insecurity at Bates Technical College
By: Conner Board
TACOMA, Wash — Thousands of people in Pierce County struggle to put food on the table. GoodRoots Northwest estimates around 12% of Pierce County residents face situational or prolonged food insecurity.
Among those who experience food insecurity are college students. A new resource that is the first of its kind on the West Coast is now aimed at alleviating this problem.
At the start of the year, GoodRoots Northwest installed climate-controlled food lockers at Bates Technical College, inside a building on the South Campus. The lockers are exclusively for Bates students to pick up free groceries and can be used by students who attend any of the three campuses.
“We’re making sure we create an environment where students do not have to worry about their next meal, when they should only focus on their education,” said Lin Zhou, the president of Bates Technical College.
Nearly 50% of students at Bates Technical College face food insecurity, according to Zhou. She added that this is a common problem for students at colleges across the nation.
Bates Technical College has already been operating food pantries on all three of its campuses, but say this new resource will allow students to be connected to refrigerated groceries.
Students can order groceries weekly online for free through GoodRoots Northwest and schedule for pick-up. They get a notification when their grocery delivery has been delivered to a locker and receive a code or barcode to open the locker.
These are the first climate-controlled food lockers to be installed on a college campus on the West Coast. The CEO of GoodRoots Northwest said this is an important group of people to serve.
“Having to make decisions like I need to unenroll so that I can address basic human needs like food for me and my family, that is something that I feel we can put a stop to as a society,” said Stacey Crnich, the CEO of GoodRoots Northwest.
GoodRoots Northwest has been operating since 2009 and opened its first food locker in Bonney Lake in 2022. The non-profit now has nine food lockers throughout Pierce County serving around 6,000 people. Anyone can sign up to receive free food, there are no specific qualifications.
The non-profit already has plans to open another food locker on a second college campus in the area. In mid-August they plan to open a food locker on the Pierce College campus in Puyallup. They hope this model of connecting people to food becomes more widespread.
“The biggest success that we could have, is that this becomes duplicable, scalable, and that other communities can do this with our help or with our inspiration,” said Crnich.
One student KING 5 spoke to who gone to Bates for two years said as a working college student, sometimes money can be tight.
“Even with me having a part time job, it can be difficult some weeks if I don’t work as much for those two weeks,” said Seth Anderson, who has attended Bates for two years.
Anderson said being able to afford healthy food can be difficult, but now these food lockers installed at the start of the year are giving Seth and other students access to free and nutritious food.
“With GoodRoots, it has been helpful to get those healthier things for me,” said Anderson.
GoodRoots Northwest got funding to help make this project happen through Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland’s office and the Employees Community Fund of Boeing Puget Sound.
Boeing sent a statement that said in part:
“The refrigerated truck GoodRoots uses to serve their food locker network clients was made possible in part through a $50,000 grant from the Employees Community Fund (ECF) of Boeing. ECF is 100% employee funded and through the pooling of individual contributions is able to provide grants that make a community impact.”
The GoodRoots locker system currently serves Buckley, Bonney Lake, Carbonado, Orting, Wilkeson, South Prairie, and Tacoma.