The El Dorado School District is unveiling their new food trailer.
“This Food Truck is something that the District has been planning toward for over a year now. We’re excited to finally have the trailer and are eager to see all the ways our Food Service Department will be able to use it to meet the needs of our students and community,” Superintendent Jim Tucker said.
“Our hope is for the food trailer to be a part of our field days, football games, and any community event that could use food,” Kim Newman, Child Nutrition Director for the ESD, said. “So we see the food truck as a versatile piece of equipment to bring people together and to have a good time around food.
The food trailer exterior is decked out in Wildcat purple, white, and black. There’s a ‘Welcome! Order Here’ window to invite potential partakers and a catchy Wildcat motto near the bottom right corner: “Cat Bites. Feed Your Wild.”
Inside the trailer is a spacious kitchen with multiple sinks, a stove top, deep fryer, ample storage, preparation space and a sizable fridge.
“We also hope to use it at schools to support our faculty and students. It can be a coffee bar, it can be used for hot dogs and hamburgers, it can be carnival food, we can use it for chilli cookoffs, we can use it for staff appreciation days,” Newman said. “It can be anything we want it to be to express the spirit and hospitality of the El Dorado School District.”
Right now the trailer will be mostly utilized for special events but the district has not ruled out also integrating the trailer into their daily food services.
“We may use it for that role. We talked about the possibility of parking it and having it function at different schools on a consistent basis to make sure all the needs are met,” Newman said.
The district is currently working on several food menus for the trailer and each menu will correspond with the specific event that the trailer is serving.
There is also a vision to potentially integrate the trailer into some of the curriculum offered within the school district.
“We would like to partner with some of the different culinary classes we have. The high school has two culinary arts classes that we would love to partner with and flush out some of the food truck projects. Because they already do that as a part of the course,” Newman explained.
There are so many possibilities Kim Newman and the district are looking forward to doing with the trailer and the excitement is palpable.
“People are really excited, especially on the school board,” Newman exclaimed. “The school board has been a part of the conversation since day one and it is their baby. They are really looking forward to taking a peak in it.”
The district is still working on meeting all codes and guidelines associated with operating a food trailer but are confident that the Wildcat food trailer will be making its debut in the near future.