Green Run High School students got the first taste Wednesday of a new lunch option coming to Virginia Beach schools — a food truck.
Wednesday’s special? A Cubano sandwich with a special mojo sauce made from an assistant chef’s family recipe.
“Maybe it’s the change of scenery and since it’s coming out of a food truck … it might make it like it’s tasting different,” sophomore Jayden Foster said.
The food truck — or “school kitchen on wheels,” as Viorica Harrison, division director of food services likes to call it — will act as an extension of the schools’ cafeterias, offering nutritious and scratch-cooked meals similar to what is available in the school cafeteria. It will rotate through Virginia Beach schools, starting with the high schools.
Students can still swipe their ID cards to pay for the meal, just as they would in the cafeteria, and students who receive free or reduced lunches will also get to take advantage. Harrison said no student should feel left out of this experience.
The truck has many goals, none bigger than offering nutritious meals to students. But another is to provide an additional food line at lunch.
When the division made the shift to one lunch in 2018-19, the lines got longer. Nicholas Vedia, district sous chef, said that deterred some students from getting lunch, so the food truck is a way to feed the students “we were missing.”
Vedia said the division estimated about 200 students did not eat lunch on a regular basis. The truck gives them another option.
The food truck was converted from an old pony delivery truck. When schools were closed during the pandemic, it was used as a garden truck. It was outfitted with kitchen modernizations through grants from the nonprofits No Kid Hungry and the Hansen Foundation to not just provide tasty and culturally inclusive meals, but to educate students on nutrition.
Over the summer, Harrison said the goal is to use the truck in the community. It will go from summer school to summer school and maybe even be an educational tool throughout the community by teaching people about scratch cooking.
The goal for Virginia Beach school kitchens is to serve more meals assembled with fresher ingredients, which is a staple of scratch cooking. The “Scratch” logo on the side of the food truck shows the division’s commitment to the initiative.
“We hope when (families) look at the food truck, the biggest thing they see is that Virginia Beach City Public Schools cares about their students and their health and their well-being,” Harrison said.
Kelsey Kendall, kelsey.kendall@virginiamedia.com
