Soldiers at Fort Shafter, Hawaii, are getting new food options and meal plans since dining options around the base amount to what officials have dubbed a “food desert.”
This is significant for the 500 soldiers at the small garrison because it hasn’t had a dining facility since 2012.
To fill in the gap, the Army opened the Culinary Outpost food truck last month, which feeds hundreds of soldiers on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Meals cost between $7 and $10, and soldiers can also buy vacuum-sealed meals that they can refrigerate for the rest of the week, officials said.
“I’ve been on the island for a short period of time, and just like anybody else, just like any other soldier, I was hungry during lunch,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Montrell Kea, the senior enlisted leader for the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, in an Army release. “I was trying to find a place to eat, but there really weren’t many options outside of the [post exchange].”
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A video posted to Instagram shows Kea doing a “Mukbang” video trying the various food truck meals and a menu including beef or chicken stir fry, loaded hot dogs, vegetable lo mein, and other “bowl” options.
In a LinkedIn post about the new food truck, the service wrote that it is “actively solving the ‘food desert’ challenge at Fort Shafter, Hawaii.”
“Previously, soldiers at Fort Shafter faced a 19-minute drive to the nearest dining facility, costing them valuable time during the duty day. Through heavy coordination across the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, U.S. Army Pacific, and installation partners, Army Food Service is now coming directly to the workforce,” Army officials said in the post.
Lack of kitchen space, no chow hall
The term “food desert” is used to describe geographic locations without convenient access to affordable and healthy food options. The Army’s use of the phrase, in a post to an official account, is telling.
The issue of limited food options for enlisted soldiers on the island was raised at an Army Garrison Hawaii town hall earlier this year.
Soldiers at Schofield Barracks said their dining facility was routinely closed, leaving some to resort to ordering Uber Eats. Army officials said it was closed because the soldiers who operate it were in the field that month and that two other cafeterias on base were available.
Meanwhile, at Fort Shafter, which is located roughly 20 miles southwest of Schofield just outside of Honolulu, Hawaii, their dining hall is also closed full time as the Army turns it into one of the new campus-style dining venues.
Nathan Wilkes, a spokesperson for Army Garrison Hawaii, said more than 500 enlisted soldiers live in the barracks on Fort Shafter. Because of the lack of a dining facility, soldiers receive a stipend — called Basic Allowance for Subsistence II — which they can use to buy food locally, he said. BAS II is given to service members living on installations without “adequate food storage or preparation facilities” or an official military mess hall.
On-post dining options at Fort Shafter include the food court at the Post Exchange, which has a coffee shop and Subway, and the Strike Zone Snack Bar at the base bowling center, which sells sandwiches, burgers, and pizza, photos on Yelp show. Other nearby options are fast food chains like Domino’s Pizza and Jack in the Box, as well as local Thai or Hawaiian BBQ restaurants, according to Google Maps. Wilkes said soldiers can also use microwaves or kitchens in their barracks to prepare food.
Rob Evans, an Army veteran who created Hots & Cots, a Yelp-like app for the barracks and dining halls for rank-and-file troops, said he’s been hearing about issues with food on the base for most of the year. Evans said that soldiers had described the initial response from base leadership as “dismissive,” at the start of 2026.
In a video posted to Reddit showing the exchange, an enlisted leader suggested that soldiers go to the 25th Infantry Division’s culinary training center for classes that teach them how to cook with commissary food ingredients. He noted that cooktops are often replaced in the barracks, adding that “it’s damaged because people don’t know how to cook.”
However, “hearing that Type II BAS is now approved is a real win for an already difficult situation,” Evans said. “When soldiers surface specific gaps through official channels — and when leaders listen — conditions shift.”
The Fort Shafter dining facility closure is not recent, Wilkes said. The Army closed it back in 2012 “due to insufficient use,” and because the service wanted to free up enlisted food service workers to feed soldiers during tactical and field training, he added.
Fort Shafter’s dining hall is one of more than 10 bases that the Army is transforming into a new facility resembling college and university cafeterias. The service has opened other campus-style dining venues at Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Drum, New York, where soldiers use “freedom dollars” to pay for meals and now get access to touchscreen ordering and to-go dining options.
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