New vending machine brings healthy food to Louisville's Shawnee Library

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A new vending machine at the Shawnee Library is offering more than just snacks — it’s providing access to healthy, fresh meals in a neighborhood where that’s often hard to come by.

The machine, created by local entrepreneur Anora Morton, is part of her start-up called Nori, which she founded after struggling with food insecurity herself.

The Louisville Free Public Library partnered with The Library Foundation to team up with The Nori Project, which is locally-owned, to install the machine. It has already been restocked twice in the past week.

Items in the machine at the Shawnee Library include granola bars, grab-and-go smoothies, juice boxes, healthy chips, sparkling water, fruit snacks, bottled water and nutritious meals.

Morton, the founder and CEO of Nori, said the idea came to her during a study abroad trip to Japan, where vending machines are used for everything — even full meals.

“They have vending machines for everything,” she said. “The machine is going to put the dish in the internal microwave and it will take up to 60 seconds to deliver it hot and ready to eat.”

Another type of Nori machine — one that heats up meals on demand — is already operating inside Story, a co-working space in Nulu. The new refrigerated version at Shawnee Library is stocked with grab-and-go meals and healthy snacks.

The meals are prepared by Zest, a branch of Feed Louisville. If a meal does not sell after few days, it is donated back to Feed Louisville.

"We work with them very closely to get what it is that we want to sell in our machines, and then also what customers are expecting to see. They want to see more salads, more wraps," Morton said. "It's very easy, and we work with Louisville based chefs to do that through Zest."

For Norton, the mission is personal.

“I feel like with Nori, it’s not complicated,” Morton said. “Everybody deserves access to healthy food. Easy access.”

While attending law school at the University of Louisville, Morton lived in the Shawnee neighborhood and quickly realized the lack of nearby, quality food options.

“I would go [to a store] and their produce section just looked like it was run over with a lawnmower,” she said.

Instead of settling for inadequate produce, she would often travel to St. Matthew's to access grocery stores with better produce offerings.

That experience stuck with her.

“Louisville is where I felt the pain of food insecurity,” Morton said. “So it was important that I got started here in Louisville. I felt like it was a full-circle thing — that I had to come and fix.”

Damera Blincoe, Library Services Manager for Louisville Free Public Library, helped bring the vending machine to Shawnee with support from the Library Foundation.

“The West End is a food desert. I mean, there’s no other way to put it,” Blincoe said. “Folks that live in this area are able to have access to not only the knowledge that the library provides, but to have access to good, nutritious food.”

Blincoe said the machine has already been a hit. "They’re really, really going fast," she said.

Blincoe hopes to see Nori vending machines installed at all Louisville library branches in the future.

As for Morton, her focus remains on Louisville for now — but she hopes to expand across Kentucky and eventually nationwide.

Morton compared her business to health vending machines you see in places like airports, but said the difference is Nori offers two business models.

"You see them (vending machines) in other places where it's extremely high foot traffic, because that's how the revenue model is structured. With Nori, we have two different revenue models because we don't want to limit that healthy food access to just those high foot traffic areas," Morton said. "Places like the library, they may not have extremely high foot traffic, but they have the need. With Nori, we're able to work with them so we can get a nori machine in their space through our program called nori on site."

Morton said Nori On-Site, requires locations to pay a quarterly subscription fee. Nori then stocks and services the machine.

In places where there is high foot-traffic, the machine can be placed for free and then do a revenue share.

The Shawnee Library is open seven days a week: Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday from 1-5 p.m. It's located at 3912 W. Broadway.

Related Stories: