A new truck rolled into the Grace Campus homeless shelter Sunday, towing behind it a converted camper. The camper is covered in chalk drawings from community members and equipped with a newly-working kitchen.
It belongs to Lubbock Street Gourmet, one of Lubbock’s most up-and-coming charities. They sell food using their truck and with those profits buy more food to deliver to the homeless. Over the weekend they attended the Lubbock Arts Festival, selling food with the assistance of Monterey High’s Culinary Arts program.
While Lubbock Street Gourmet has been making deliveries to the homeless for months, Sunday was the first day they were able to cook food in their converted camper.
Grace Campus residents lined up for tacos, sweet potato fries and steak fritters, asking Lubbock Street Gourmet volunteers questions about their funky truck and business model.
“I got a wonderful taco, with beans and cheese and hamburger meat on it, it’s really delicious,” said Grace Campus resident Mary Wilson.
“Earlier in the day we were selling popcorn, raising money, then we came out here, we started cooking food. We tried earlier to make sure everything worked and to make sure all the food was gonna be able to be made,” said Mason Brock, a culinary arts student at Monterey High. Brock really enjoys working with Lubbock Street Gourmet and has been talking to his culinary arts teacher about getting class credit for the time he spends helping out.
All the help from community members like Brock paid off for Lubbock Street Gourmet, Grace Campus residents gave overwhelmingly positive reviews about the food.
“This is the first time the Lubbock Food Truck has ever been here and it’s been wonderful, thank you,” Wilson said.
The founders of Lubbock Street Gourmet said that smiles from people like Wilson make this new project worthwhile.
“Anyone whose ever worked in a restaurant or tried to start up their own restaurant knows you kind of have bumps and bruises along the way that you didn’t think you’d find. But there’s a learning curve, everyone experiences and so we over came those little bumps and bruises with the help of the community,” said Kyle Shields, Co-Founder of Luboock Street Gourmet.
He explained that some of those bumps and bruises included learning how to get the kitchen up and running in their truck, as well as driving carefully with a full camper trailing behind them.
Now that the truck is up and running, Lubbock Street Gourmet and the culinary arts students plan to make regular deliveries at places like Grace Campus. How do residents feel about that?
“Oh definitely, we’ll be waiting for them,” Mary Wilson said with a grin.
If you would like to get in touch with Lubbock Street Gourmet, the easiest way to reach them is through their Facebook page.