Inside Solo Faith's Pantry Pilot: A New Way of Choosing Who Orders

The subject line that landed in Concord inboxes on Thursday night was blunt: "Why you can't order this week." For a household waiting on groceries, that is not a comfortable thing to read. So it is worth saying plainly what sits behind it, because the answer is not that Solo Faith Church ran out of food, and it is not that anyone was removed from the pantry.

Starting this week, the church's online food pantry is running a pilot. Instead of filling orders in the order they arrive, the system now looks first at which households have not received an order yet this month and gives those households the available slots. If your home already received a box in August, you may have found you could not place an order. That is the pilot working the way it was desig ned to work, not a glitch.

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What the announcement actually said

The email went out under the heading "Fairer Support for All — a pilot trial for equitable food pantry distribution." The operative sentence was this one: "To ensure every family has access to the resources they need, we will use an assisted selection process to prioritize households that have not yet received an order this month." The church called this week a trial period while it decides whether the model becomes permanent. Nothing about this is final yet.

How the choosing actually works

The pilot is rotation-based. The rule is simple enough to write on an index card: a household that has not received an order this month goes ahead of a household that already has. Nobody is ranked by how needy they appear, by what they said on a form, or by what street they live on.

Software applies that rule. Solo Faith is testing an AI-assisted selection step that runs against the weekly order list, and the church is being direct about it rather than leaving it inside the phrase "assisted selection." The question the pilot is meant to answer is narrow: does a consistent automated pass spread a limited number of weekly boxes more evenly than a first-come, first-served queue does? This is a test run for a future change, not a settled policy.

One thing follows directly from the rule as written. The priority group is defined by the calendar month, which means a household that already got a box in August is not shut out indefinitely. When the month turns over, that household is back in the priority group.

Why a pantry would rotate at all

A first-come, first-served queue sounds like the fairest thing in the world until you look at who it actually rewards. It rewards speed — the fastest phone, the steadiest internet connection, the free minute at the exact moment a restock posts. The households that have none of those advantages are often the same households already dealing with a broken-down car, a missed bus, or a work shift they cannot leave. Those are precisely the neighbors this ministry exists for, and in a pure race they end up at the back of a line they never saw form.

Solo Faith Church's food work has always been built around removing that kind of barrier. The church runs a free online pantry out of Concord, delivers groceries to the door for households that cannot reach a pantry at all — including runs through DoorDash's Project Dash — and sources food in partnership with Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina. Rotating access is that same instinct applied one layer further in, to the order list itself.

It is also worth naming the arithmetic underneath all of this. A pantry rotates because demand outruns supply, and no selection method — human, automated, or otherwise — creates a single additional box of food. Sponsorship does. Anyone who wishes the pantry did not have to choose can change that math at solofaith.org/giving.

Questions neighbors asked this week

Was I removed from the pantry? No. The pilot changes the order in which households can place an order during a given week. It does not remove anyone from the pantry, from the delivery list, or from the church's contact list.

My household already got a box this month. When am I in the priority group again? By the rule the church published, priority goes to households that have not received an order in the current calendar month — so a household served in August returns to the priority group when September begins. If your need is urgent before then, contact the church directly rather than waiting for the calendar.

Do I have to reapply or fill anything out? No. Solo Faith's pantry has never required an application, an income verification, or a stack of paperwork, and the pilot does not add one.

How will I know when the pantry restocks? Watch for the church's email updates, and put the Solo Faith Church app on your phone using restocking code KICRLC. It sends an alert the moment new groceries post, which matters more than usual while ordering slots are rotating.

What if something looks wrong on my account? Say so. A pilot only works if people report where it breaks, and a household skipped by mistake is exactly the kind of thing the church needs to hear about during a trial period.

If you could not order this week

Reach out rather than wait it out. Call the church office at 704.214.5422, email admin@solofaith.org, or come by Solo Faith Church at 587 Old Charlotte Rd SW, Concord, NC 28027. The pantry itself lives at solofaith.org/foodbank.

If your household has an urgent need this week — an empty refrigerator, a child at home, no way to get to a store — say that when you call or write. A rotation is a way of sharing a limited supply fairly. It was never meant to be a wall.

Solo Faith Church is publishing this explanation because a family that cannot order groceries is owed a reason, not a silence. Telling neighbors how a decision got made — especially a decision a piece of software had a hand in — is part of what it means to serve people with dignity instead of simply processing them.

Originally published on the Solo Faith Church blog: https://www.solofaith.org/post/inside-solo-faith-s-pantry-pilot-a-new-way-of-choosing-who-orders

Community Support Note: This post is part of Solo Faith Church's community journalism work in Concord and Cabarrus County. The details above were drawn from the church's own August 28, 2026 email announcement to its contact list and from a description of the pilot provided directly by Solo Faith Church leadership. Two things were not confirmed at the time of writing and are deliberately left out rather than estimated: how long the trial period runs, and how many households it covers. Both will be reported here once the church has them.