A white refrigerator sits inside a red shed on Government Street in Mid City, welcoming the community to free food all night and day. The community fridge is operated by Red Shoes, a faith-based non-profit, located next to the fridge at 2303 Government St.
Residents are invited to take as much as they need. The fridge is continually stocked as local volunteers drop off donations multiple times a day to help keep the fridge full.
Red Shoes, which was founded to help women with spiritual and personal growth, opened the fridge to residents in 2021 to ensure that no one goes hungry in the state’s capital city. But with skyrocketing food prices and the recent, record-breaking government shutdown, the fridge has been a valuable resource, community members say.
Visits to the fridge average about 200 people a day, Red Shoes staff members estimate. An increasing number of individual donors and businesses are supplying food for the fridge, as well as helping to keep it clean.
“The need is greater than you would ever know, until you witness it,” said Dorcas Brandon, the associate director for Red Shoes.
Manning Bergeron, owner of House Brew Coffee, located a few blocks away, first heard about the fridge and began helping out when Brandon, one of his regular customers, told him about it.
“I see the community fridge as insurance for food,” Bergeron said. “With no sign-up or bureaucracy to navigate, it allows every member of the community to have access to a resource in crisis.”
Brandon mentioned the fridge to Bergeron because he was donating at the time to another community fridge, which has since closed. Bergeron soon got involved with the Red Shoes fridge, too. He added pavers to stabilize the fridge and an awning to help keep it from overheating as people constantly opened and closed it.
“It was just really hot that day,” Bergeron said of what inspired him to make the additions. “I got to witness the fridge in action and how many people donate and take items. I’m grateful for it.”
Bergeron hosts sandwich-making parties at his coffee shop, a safe place for anyone who seeks community, he said. He donates meals from his kitchen each month to help keep food flowing in the fridge. He also gives customers a 10% discount for donating nonperishable foods to take to the fridge, which also has built-in shelves beside it in the shed to store items that don’t need refrigeration.
Brandon, who has worked at Red Shoes for the past two years, was a high school educator before changing careers. She said she has seen firsthand the effects of food insecurity in Baton Rouge, and she notices how quickly the food disappears from the fridge. The grab-and-go foods that don’t need to be cooked are the most popular items since many people have limited access to a stove, she said.
“Dried beans and dried lentils stay in there the longest because people can’t really do anything with that,” Brandon said. “Lately, I love that whole foods, like those ears of corn, have been put in there. That’s not always readily available to the community that comes to the fridge.”
Last summer, Brandon hosted a campaign to fill the fridge every day in July to provide food for children who usually depended on school lunch for a good meal. Brandon said she noticed that two young girls visited the fridge regularly for food.
Brandon said she is grateful that many of her friends stepped up to help with the summer campaign.
“I’ve read or saw somewhere, when you are looking for donations, maybe that first year, you lean on your immediate circle,” she said. “And that’s exactly what I did.”
With an outpouring of donations from locals, the fridge stayed full during the summer, she said. The fridge generates mostly positive feedback from the community, but some people have expressed concerns about food disappearing too quickly from the fridge. Brandon said that is the result of people who are insecure about when and where they will get their next meal, taking what they think they need.
“We know if we open our fridge, and there’s some strawberries in there, and we close our fridge, those strawberries are still going to be in there,” she said. But many people in our community don’t have that luxury.
Brandon said she plans to collect enough donations to provide more security for the community that depends on the refrigerator. A refrigerator that remains fully stocked will give those in need hope that something is going to be in there the next day, she said.
Regular donors, like Baton Rouge resident Misty Roy, help keep that hope alive. Roy said she is just a mom who understands the importance of having help because she once had to overcome her own struggles. Roy, who discovered the fridge on the organization’s Facebook page, makes weekly donations of canned goods, hygiene products, and a variety of proteins to the Red Shoes fridge.
“I’m thankful to give back to the community,” Roy said.
The fridge has helped to build a culture of community, caring for neighbors in need, Brandon said. There are regular volunteers who wait at the fridge to help her put away the items.
“I don’t have to bend over for a box,” she said. “They will bend over for me and hand it to me.”
This story was reported and written by a student with the support of the non-profit Louisiana Collegiate News Collaborative, an LSU-led coalition of eight universities funded by the Henry Luce and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundations.