NYC Summer Food: Food Trucks to Text Messages

From the USDA blog:

For most children, summertime means school vacation, family trips and beach days, but for many, it also means losing the two free or reduced-price meals provided at school.

The New York City Department of Education SchoolFood program is working with USDA’s Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) to fill that nutrition gap and taking aggressive steps to ensure that no child goes hungry this summer.

One of the most successful initiatives was the launch of three food trucks. Averaging between 550 and 950 meals a day per truck, they have been able to serve over 17,000 meals to children so far this summer. In addition, there are 362 open service sites throughout the city, which provide free meals to children on a first-come, first-serve basis in communities where 50 percent or more children are eligible for free or reduced-price meals in the National School Lunch Program.

Leading up to the beginning of the Summer Food Service season, the program distributed 1.2 million post cards, 140,000 flyers and 2,000 posters in low participation areas. The program also provides information via phone calls and texts to individuals seeking information about summer feeding sites.

Read the full post on the USDA blog.