The smell of spices and cooking meat fills the air. A motor drones on, a background noise to muffle the chattering of staff and students as they dig into their corn and tacos. 

On September 1, the ribbon cutting ceremony was held for the THS culinary food truck. This has been an idea years in the making, and finally it has come to fruition.

“This has been a vision of mine since I started at Texas,” culinary teacher Cory House said. “And it has taken the people in the right places to make this happen.”

Culinary students spent all day preparing, excitedly anticipating the big opening.

“I’m really excited,” junior Iliana Osunu said. “The food truck’s really great, and I love doing it. We’ve been outside cooking in [the truck] for like two hours, but it’s really exciting, and I’m happy that we have the truck now.”

Although House was helping in the kitchen, the truck really is being run by Texas High’s very own culinary students. This is an amazing opportunity for them to get culinary experience in a different setting they’re used to.

“Working in a food truck is a lot different than working in a normal kitchen,” House said. “You’re compact, you’re tight, and so there’s a lot of close quarters and functioning in tighter spaces. But you know, all the general training that the students go through as far as food handler training, ServSafe training, safety, sanitation, everything, it still applies, so they’re able to translate what they learned in the classroom and apply it, but just modify it to make it work inside of a food truck.”

While they only served corn and tacos at the ribbon cutting, House says that the limits are endless to the types of food they might serve.

“The great thing about our food truck is that it’s a general purpose food truck,” House said. “Most food trucks are set up for a specialty meal or specialty items, but we built our food trucks so it’s versatile. So if we want to do hamburgers, fries and all of that good stuff, we can. If we want to run tacos, we can. If we want to do pasta, we can. The possibilities are unending with the way our truck is set up.”

While students may be disappointed to learn that the truck wont be serving lunch to them just yet, there are still big plans in store for it across the district.

“We’re doing National Night out in Wake Village,” House said. “We’re catering for the band for every home game this school year. We’ll also be on all of the campuses. So elementary school campuses, sixth grade center, middle school, here at Texas High, renting the food truck for staff and hopefully at some point we will be able to serve students.”

Despite some minor hiccups here and there, the night overall was a success, and it’ll be exciting to see where culinary and their food truck go from here. 

“This is an opportunity for our students to gain experiences and further their education,” House said, “and you know put in the work and make themselves proud. The sky’s the limit.”