PECOS, Texas — Get in gear because the Purple People Feeder is ready for business.
That's the new $100,000 school food truck in Pecos.
"The new food trends right now are food trucks. You go to Austin, you see them everywhere and it's a big trend in the K12 industry across the United States. It's something that I've wanted to bring out and so we were asked for some out-of-the-box ideas and this was the out of the box idea that I had," District Nutrition Director Joy Peters said.
Peters and her team brought this idea to the school board about a year ago.
They voted to allot funds for the truck last May and now their dream is a reality.
"We're always trying to innovate, in fact, that was our big focus this year," Peters said.
One big reason for this truck was the idea of having accessible warm meals.
"Keeping the hot food in the kids, instead of just having sack lunches," Peters said.
Another reason is its mobility.
"We have a lot of ground to cover and our schools are pretty close together. We've got a lot of oil traffic in and out and so the highway through town is a lot busier and we don't want kids having to cross the streets during the summer to get to us," Peters said.
The need is clear-Joy says about 70 percent of Pecos students in the district qualify for free or reduced meals.
In the summer the district generally feeds students at one location and they're coming from all over. This truck will allow the food to come to them.
Joy walked us through what a day as one of their 6 food truck workers would look like.
The employees start their day by parking at the designated school. Then they turn on the generator switch, and within about a minute the warmer heats up and the fridge cools.
Then they're in business to serve up anything from waffles to tacos to gyros.
"School food really has gotten to this new level across the United States. There's a lot of passionate people that are in this business," Peters said.
You can bet in Pecos that those passionate people are leading the way in school nutrition.