At Anderson High School in Austin, Texas, the foodservice team serves 100 students at breakfast and 200 at lunch in less than an hour out of a tiny, stationary food trailer. The trick, says Anneliese Tanner, director of Austin ISD nutrition and food services, is prepping everything in the school’s cafeteria with foodservice staff and assembling the meals in the independent facility, which is presented as just another of the city's many food trucks.
The trailer's menu is completely different than the one offered in the cafeteria. Although the students are essentially just picking up food from a different location, they see it as a novelty. Tanner says the the students don't consider it cafeteria food; they see it as outside food.
“We couldn’t do made-to-order on the truck like a normal food truck,” Tanners says. “So we’re making the food in bulk in the cafeteria kitchens and assembling and serving out of the truck. That’s really been successful in terms of operations and the perception that the menu is completely different.”
The Nacho Average Food Truck, which debuted this October, serves street tacos, which are popular among Austin mobile operations. Unlike many of the city's trucks, the trailer meets USDA nutrition regulations and operates under the National School Lunch Program. “In Austin in particular, food trucks are part of our food culture,” says Tanner. “So bringing the food truck to the school district was a contemporary way to serve healthy, tasty foods to all of our students.” Since rolling out the trailer, Anderson has outpaced other schools' breakfast and lunch participation by 2% and 1%, respectively.
Tanner created excitement around the truck by bringing students into the planning process. Students voted on the name and menu, and an art student designed the truck’s logo and trade dress. She says students now feel a sense of ownership when it comes to the truck. “It really created some excitement and buzz, because they were talking about what the names would be and what they would come up with for the logo weeks before the food truck opened,” she says.
The street tacos served from Anderson's trailer have been added to the menus of the other schools in the district, and this fall Austin ISD is trying out a mobile Vietnamese truck. Tanner says she will take the tips and tricks she learned from this first truck as she doubles her fleet.