Chef Nate Walls was known for his barbeque in Fayetteville, AR. But when the pandemic hit, his catering business suffered. With few orders coming in, he had a lot of time to reflect.
He figured that if things were tough for him, it must be worse for others. “So I talked with my wife and she said, ‘Let’s take a thousand dollars and see what we can get done.’”
They started cooking and delivering food in areas they thought might be struggling. “Just homestyle food, stuff I grew up with,” Walls says. A few people volunteered to help them.
“We wanted to just check on people. When people eat, they tend to warm up to you a little bit, and nothing brings back good memories like food.”
But giving out food wasn’t as easy as it might sound. “There’s been so many doors slammed in our faces,” recounts Walls. In some black neighborhoods, people wouldn’t open doors for white volunteers. “Or somebody says, ‘Just leave it there.’ Because there’s a lot of crime and folks just don’t trust anybody.”
At a trailer park where Confederate flags were flying, folks were angry he was offering help and yelled racial slurs. One man in particular was “fully committed” in his hate, Walls says. “I’m thinking, ‘If he can commit to that, I can commit to what we’re doing.’”
He and his volunteers kept coming back. “It took a few times for me to go out there to win them over,” Walls says. “I would just keep on trying to have conversations. ‘How was your day?’ Talk about sports. And feeding people.”
Conversations were the most important ingredient in his recipe to build trust. “Folks grew more comfortable speaking and socializing with the volunteers, and the volunteers began to see that the folks in these neighborhoods were actually just people with families who are trying to get by day to day.”
Over time, the conversations grew deeper. “We talk about drugs and alcohol, having challenges with teenagers, not being able to feed the little babies. We talk about relationships. All of those conversations come on the other side of food.”
“Having those conversations — it’s just as vital as the food is,” says Walls. “And I think sometimes even more so.” As an example, he mentions that the “fully committed” guy in the trailer park now texts him regularly. “We built a real relationship.”
Chef Walls has built relationships with the folks he cooks for, the volunteers who help him deliver his meals, the young men he mentors along the way, and the organizations and individuals who donate. What began as his personal mission to help during the pandemic is now a non-profit called Second Helping NWA (NorthWest Arkansas).
Initially, Walls thought he would stop his deliveries when COVID ended and go back to his catering business. “I think I fell in love with the process of feeding people, making people smile, getting other people to be a part of it,” he says.
“To me — and this is going to sound weird — giving to people and helping people is probably the most selfish thing I’ve ever done for my soul. It makes you feel so good. And people understand, once they help out with us, that it does make you feel really good. So, I fell in love with that.”
Second Helping NWA is now a Fayetteville fixture. A woman paid the fees that allowed Second Helping to become an official non-profit. Local foundations now support Walls. He sometimes partners with restaurants to hold events that feed the entire community, serving enormous feasts during Christmas and Easter. He even helps organize a Christmas toy drive, so no children will think they are “bad” kids if they don’t get toys, like the holiday song warns.