KCC’s new food truck focuses on teaching and community service

No matter the weather, when the Cooking Up a Rainbow food truck rolls in, so do blue skies and rays of sunshine. The truck is adorned with a cheery graphic that depicts a beautiful day, complete with an abundance of fresh fruits and veggies. This food truck earnestly conveys its intent to promote healthful diets.

Run by Kapiolani Community College’s culinary department, the truck is tied to educational opportunities for students in various culinary programs while also serving the larger community. Its very existence is the result of private grants from companies that share the department’s interest in supporting community health.

This summer, the truck has been delivering meals to seven sites where programs serve students who qualify for free and reduced school lunches. KCC staff and students cook about 600 lunches daily that are transported in hot boxes and served by volunteers.

But that’s just the half of it. Beginning in the fall, the truck will be converted into a food truck, which culinary students will use to test healthful recipes they are creating specifically to prepare and serve from the vehicle.

The truck is one of a kind, with plug-in kitchen equipment that can be rolled in and out, transforming the vehicle’s function.

That flexibility didn’t come cheap, said Daniel Leung, KCC’s health and wellness program coordinator. Kaiser Permanente provided a $70,000 grant and Walmart Foundation an additional $50,000 grant that went toward purchasing and refurbishing the truck, and supplying some of the equipment.

KCC had only a converted passenger van when it began supplying hot summer lunches in 2016 as a vendor for the Summer Food Service Program. “We struggled to load the hot boxes,” Leung recalled. “With the truck, it’s much easier. We just roll the boxes in and out.”

Such a vehicle has been a long time coming for the school.

“This is something we’ve been trying to get off the ground for about five years. It was about finding the funds to do it,” said Ron Takahashi, chair of KCC’s Culinary Arts Department.

The food truck will be primarily a mobile healthy-cooking training vehicle used at community health events. But to keep it financially viable, it will serve healthy menu items on campus four days a week, using ingredients that are locally sourced and organic when possible, with some vegan and gluten-free items.

“We knew the truck had to be self-sustaining, or else without grants it would disappear forever. This way, we can carry it over for a long time. Using it for a food outlet on campus will help sustain costs,” Takahashi said.

“The truck offers real-world learning,” Leung added. It also opens the door for KCC to develop training for aspiring food-truck operators.

The school’s summer meals are produced with the help of students in a KCC program, Go Cook! Hawaii, which gives participants on-the-job training that gets them kitchen-ready in 10 weeks. With the current shortage of workers in the food industry, job placement is at 100 percent for those who complete the program.

The school has long made it a priority to support local farms, developing recipes using local ingredients. Testing some of these dishes during the summer program could lead to efficient ways of producing healthy dishes for school lunches that include local ingredients, which would have a huge impact on farmers, Takahashi said.

The biggest problem for local farmers is selling B-grade items — less pristine, imperfect produce that markets and restaurants won’t take, he said. If school food-service systems could purchase these in bulk to use in the recipes, it would help farmers.

“These are the first steps in making eating healthy and local a viable option, not just in a high-end restaurant.”

On a recent Friday, the truck delivered some 120 meals to Kuhio Park Terrace, where Parents and Children Together runs various programs. Families gathered in the gym, where volunteers served a meal of teri chicken, hapa rice, tossed salad, mandarin oranges and lowfat milk.

Roezlynna Carlmai could only nod when asked if she was enjoying her lunch. The 4-year-old was busy finishing the last of her oranges, a favorite item from the summer meals. Her grandmother Meryna Latty brought Roez­lynna and her siblings, Dorothy, 6, and Kailani, 3, for the meal.

“It’s good food, healthy food, and the kids like it,” said Latty, who appreciates the diversity the lunches offer — at home she cooks traditional Marshallese foods such as oysters and breadfruit.

Kaise Lautonga, a family friend seated nearby, said her children — David Lautonga, 11, Rukcok Nebo, 5, Destiny Nebo, 22 months, and niece Windy Lautonga, 5 — look forward to the meals. She said the lunches give her ideas for dishes to try at home.

“The kids like it so much. David always goes up for seconds,” she said.

The lunch program at Kuhio Park Terrace runs five days a week for the entire summer break, and the food is served at 12:30 p.m. to accommodate children who return to the site after half-day programs. This is vital.

“We’re not sure if for some kids this is the only meal of the day or the first meal of the day,” said program director Kim Golis-Robello. “If we run out of food, we have back-up food to cook or leftovers from the day prior. We never turn away the kids.”

Other organizations serving KCC meals include EAH Housing (serving Kukui Garden), Hawaii Literacy (Mayor Wright Housing), Palama Settlement and the YMCA (Nuuanu, Kalihi and a summer program at Central Middle School). Site directors agree that the Summer Food Service Program is crucial to families who depend on free lunches to keep children fed. They say the meals, which replace public school lunches, are especially important at the end of the month, when government assistance benefits run out.

“Children tell us that at home, sometimes they don’t have food, especially on the weekends. We pack the leftovers for them to take home for the weekend,” said the YMCA’s Diane Tabangay, executive director of children’s programs. The three Y sites served by KCC feed about 200 youths.

Joy Barua, Kaiser Permanente’s senior director of government and community relations and community benefit, said that funding the truck was a natural fit for the nonprofit healthcare system, which at its core is about improving community health.

“It was an ideal project for Kaiser to get behind,” he said. “Our hope would be that this effort could be scaled, that it will be a model for innovative ways of educating and providing food access to people.”