Nori, a vending machine business based out of Louisville, is now debuting at Story Louisville at 828 E. Market St in NuLu.
There are plenty of cuisines to choose from through Nori, including foods like salmon, rice and broccoli, all of which can be heated up in 45 seconds in the vending machine, and prepared hot and ready for hungry consumers.
The food itself is made with a partnership with Zest, which is the for-profit part of Feed Louisville, which prepares meals for disenfranchised communities in Louisville.
Nori ran as a startup last year through West End native Dr. Anora Morton, who stated on her site how living in a socioeconomically disadvantaged area led her to understand how difficult living in a food desert was.
“Fast forward to the COVID era, I was living in the West End of Louisville, KY, a food desert, where no grocer would deliver to me,” she said on The Nori Project’s website. “That was my breaking point.”
The idea to bring this type of vending machine to Louisville came to Morton when she was on a trip to Japan through a scholarship while she was in law school. While in Japan, she said she “fell in love” with onigiri, which is a ball of rice with salmon and other food items wrapped in seaweed.
Onigiri was sold in these types of vending machines, which gave Morton the idea to bring these fresh food items to food deserts like the West End in Louisville.
Morton and her team raised over $100,000 through the Reconstruct Challenge in the Food Justice category at the Health Equity Innovation Challenge last year.
Currently there is only one machine available in Louisville. However, Morton said that there will be more in the future.
This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 13, 2024.
