When Utahns go hungry, these grassroots resources offer a stigma-free solution

Shar Code and her daughter had just restocked the stainless steel fridge papered with flyers outside an Ogden business when a man stopped by with his own young daughter.

The girl had a backpack on and looked to be on her way to school, Code recalled.

“We heard him say, ‘Let’s see if they have a snack for you,’” Code said. “We put in several things, but one of the things was a small individual Rice Krispies Treat that she’d gotten…and that’s what the little girl chose, and she was so happy and she got to have a snack on her way to school.”

Code and her Bunko group of other retired women choose a charity to support every December, and this year they picked the Weber Fridge at 302 28th Street in Ogden. The fridge offers free food to anyone who needs it, anytime they need it, all with an eye toward removing the stigma of food insecurity.

“It’s near and dear to my heart that no one goes hungry,” Code said. “There’s no overhead, it’s just people donate, people take — and I like that philosophy.”

Hundreds of community refrigerators have popped up all over the world in recent years — including several in Utah, according to Freedge, an organization that supports the global network of public refrigerators.

In Salt Lake City, Rose Park and Sugar House have their own community fridges. Jeanette Padilla Vega, founder and president of the Food Justice Coalition, said her organization donates prepared meals to those fridges and to food pantries in Salt Lake County.

“There really isn’t too much organization behind the scenes,” Padilla Vega said of the public fridges. “It really is like, ‘Here is a community asset, we’re going to share this responsibility in making sure that it’s well-stocked and clean and available to the community.’”

Volunteers have embraced the fridge in Ogden, organizers Izzi Herzog and Anne Dunaway said. About 80 volunteers keep the fridge operating, with regular donors chipping in, too, to keep it clean and free from litter or graffiti.

“Every single day… somebody pulls up and drops off, three people show up and pick up, another person pulls up and drops off,” Dunaway said. “And it’s like that all day long. I am just so proud of my community.”

The fridge relocated to Dunaway’s business, Urban Prairie Agriculture, over the summer.

Recently, the Ogden community has been particularly affected by food insecurity, Dunaway said. The government shutdown and federal layoffs have hit the city hard, she said, because one of the area’s largest employers is the U.S. government.

These factors have blurred the line between the fridge’s frequent donors and receivers, Dunaway said.

“I no longer knew who was pulling up to get food and who was pulling up to give food — they all looked the same,” she said. “It was such a reminder that poverty is not as far away as we think it is.”

To get involved with a community fridge or to start one, Herzog said people can visit the Freedge website, reedge.org, or reach out to the Weber Fridge group on social media. The fridge can be found on Instagram under the username @weberfridge.

In Salt Lake County, Padilla Vega said people can volunteer or donate through the Food Justice Coalition’s website, foodjusticecoalition.org.