This St. Paul food truck spent the summer giving children and teens more free meals than ever before
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St. Paul Public Schools’ bright green food truck is parked outside of Frogtown Community Center on a recent day. It’s colorful and playful, with purple and blue octopus arms painted on its sides. But unlike other food trucks, this one distributes meals at no cost to children and teens 18 and under.
Children and adults relax in the grass parking strip near the truck. They hold baskets lined with red and white checkered paper and filled with yellow rice, a salad made with fresh vegetables and sambusas.
“It tastes like meat and toast mixed together” said Eli Kithinji, 7, about the sambusas. He often eats lunch at the food truck.
In 2022, the first summer the food truck was operational, about 110 meals were served each day. This year the number has more than tripled to 360 meals per day, feeding more than 300 children daily between the five sites the food truck visits across the city.
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Many Minnesota children and families who depend on school meals for basic nutrition get food through school programs over the summer months. These programs are funded by the federal summer food service program.
In addition to the food truck, St. Paul Public Schools serves meals at 60 different locations, including schools, recreation centers and libraries. Between breakfast, lunch and snacks, the district provided about 6,300 daily meals in June through August of this year.
For adults, the price for a meal at the food truck is just under nine dollars. Eli’s mom, Kristina Kithinji, likes not having to worry about lunches in the summer and says it’s nice to be outside, have a great meal and see other people in the community.
Aquiyla Giles has five children, and this is their third year getting lunch from the food truck. “My kids like it,” Giles said. “They ask to come every day.”
Starting in 2024, the program was broadened and designed to reach youth who live in and around neighborhoods where at least 50 percent of households qualify for free and reduced meals.
Two out of every three students in St. Paul schools struggle with food insecurity, said Stacy Koppen, director for nutrition services at the district. “Some of our students tell us that the only place that they get meals is at school,” Koppen said, highlighting the need for the summer meals program.
Over the years, though, families have told Koppen that transportation can also be a barrier to eating, so they added the food truck that parks at different sites throughout the week. Koppen said it has made a difference.
“A lot of parents are working. They’re trying to make ends meet,” she said. “They have limited time themselves, so being able to be mobile and get around to different parts of the community has been a real solution that we have seen work really well.”
Koppen said during the summer months, learning doesn’t stop, and students’ health needs don’t end, so providing good nutrition allows kids to return for the upcoming school year healthy and ready for academics.
One in seven children in Minnesota under the age of 18 doesn’t have consistent access to food. Dr. Liz Placzek, a pediatrician at Children’s Minnesota, said young people who do not eat nutritious meals get sick more often, take longer to recover from illness and are hospitalized more frequently.
“Childhood malnutrition is a huge issue and leads to lower bone density, higher iron deficiency, and also higher incidence of what we think of as adult-onset diseases, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” Placzek said. She added that most brain development happens in childhood, and hungry children have trouble concentrating.
Placzek said without enough food, kids are also in a higher stress state affecting their growth and health. At Children’s Minnesota all patients are screened for food insecurity.
Food shelves had a record 7.5 million visits across the state in 2023, and 2024 is on pace for even more.
Sophia Lenarz-Coy, executive director of The Food Group, a statewide nonprofit, said inflation and increasing food prices have led to more people accessing food shelves in Minnesota.
“SNAP dollars are simply not going as far, so it’s kind of like everyone’s using a patchwork of resources to get through the month,” she said. “Folks are needing to rely on food shelves just to get the same amount of support that maybe they got several years ago.”
Lenarz-Coy thinks programs that are not based on income, like the one at St. Paul Public Schools, create dignity and destigmatize food insecurity, because they do not draw attention to socioeconomic differences.
As lunch wraps up at Frogtown Community Center, the food truck staff prepares to head to its next destination at Phalen Beach House.
James Sterling, in his second year serving meals from the food truck, likes connecting with people wherever the truck stops.
“It is the coolest thing,” Sterling, a longtime St. Paul Public Schools employee, said. “I feel like I’m accomplishing a mission, to make sure all the kids are fed.”
