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    Food lockers open pantries up to working SC families to meet growing need

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    By By Tom Corwin and Janet Morgan

    Copyright postandcourier

    Food lockers open pantries up to working SC families to meet growing need

    GARDEN CITY BEACH — When you are taking your 16-year-old daughter with a brain tumor down to Charleston for a week of chemotherapy and looking after three other children, it doesn’t leave a lot of time to shop for groceries.

    That is why Stacey Chapman of Forestbrook was thrilled to find food lockers outside the food pantry at Shepherd of the Sea Lutheran Church. Now, she can go online, order the food she needs, and it is waiting for her in a refrigerated case when she has a chance to swing by, no matter the time of day.

    “I just thought that was the coolest idea,” Chapman said. “What a way to be able to accommodate a need. It’s huge to me.”

    Every week, there are more and more families to serve, and new food lockers at the pantry provide greater access.

    “We meet people where they are, where their needs are, to help them,” said Debbie Smith, food pantry director at Shepherd of the Sea.

    The lockers are the third set installed at partner food pantries by Lowcountry Food Bank, with two in the Myrtle Beach area and one in Conway. It is one way the nonprofit is trying to be more innovative to meet the growing hunger in its 10-county coastal service area.

    “We continue to see an increasing need for support across our service area,” said Nick Osborne, CEO of Lowcountry Food Bank. “We saw that increase in demand during the pandemic, but that’s continued.”

    From 2024 to 2025, the demand for food increased 40 percent, he said. At Shepherd of the Sea, there are now an average of 20 new families each week needing food assistance, compared to two or three new families a week the year before, Smith said.

    The lockers, which are refrigerator and freezer units installed outside food pantries, are just another way to get food to those families at a time that works for them. Families registered with the program go to the OrderAhead website, pick out what they want from what’s available, then get a code for their order. They can go when they are ready to the lockers outside the pantries, punch in the code and the appropriate locker opens up with their groceries.

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