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Virginia Beach City Public Schools Debuts New Food Truck Mobile option serves up scratch-made food while easing cafeteria lines | by Marygrace Taylor, Contributor, Food Management
At Virginia Beach City Public Schools, home- cooked meals are now being served on wheels. The 86-school district, which serves 65,000 students, recently launched the VBScratch food truck, which serves scratch-made fare at lunchtime. “Our goal is not only to serve our students tasty, healthy, and scratch-cooked meals, but also to provide them with nutrition education so they can build lifelong healthy habits,” says Viorica Harrison, Virginia Beach City Public Schools Office of Food Services Director. “The food truck is another creative school serving line and a vehicle to promote school nutrition programs and increase student meal participation.” VBScratch, the district’s scratch-cooking initiative, has been running since 2017. When an opportunity came up to purchase and retrofit a used white pony truck from the city’s Department of Transportation, the district jumped at the chance to transform it into a food truck that could serve lunch at the district’s 12 high schools. Cafeteria lines at the high schools, which each had between 1,500 and 2,000 students, were long, and there wasn’t always enough time for students to eat after getting their food. “We thought, we could start using the food truck as an extra service line and invite some of the kids to eat outside in the courtyard,” Harrison said.
To purchase the vehicle and convert it into a food truck, Harrison and her team obtained grant funding from No Kid Hungry and the Hansen Family Foundation and were allotted additional money from school funds. Then the pandemic hit. As was the case in so many school districts nationwide, many Virginia Beach City Public School students relied on cafeteria meals as a key source of nutrition. With in-person school closed, the truck was utilized to deliver meals to underserved families who otherwise may not have had access. Eventually regular in-person sessions started back up. And Harrison and her team resumed their food truck plans. Once the conversion process was complete, “we ended up with this amazing food truck that’s a representation of our cafeteria kitchen,” she says. “We have warmers, a generator, a fridge, a griddle a two-compartment sink, a combi oven, and the table we serve everything on.” The truck is also equipped with WiFi, which makes it easy to maintain the cashless transaction system and access information about student lunch accounts (like who has free lunch status or a food allergy). The intent, Harrison explains, was to have a food truck kitchen that could function entirely on its own. “It’s set up to be a school kitchen, so we can make the same thing we’re making in the cafeteria,” she
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