Food Truck Project Overview
This project was the a year long project in which 52 students worked hard to start their own student run, non-profit food truck, Reel Delicious. Reel Delicious is a food truck that promotes cultural understanding through food and film. The first semester, students learned about the food truck industry, designed food truck concepts, and created a Kickstarter campaign to raise $35,000 in just six weeks. Find the campaign (and wonderfully created student video that describes the concept) here. KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN
After a successful campaign, thanks to generous donors from around the world, students shifted their attention to the creation of their own business. Working in eight teams, including: legal, finance, events, pledge perks, film, public relations, audio/visual, and cooking, students took on real-world tasks and responsibilities to make their vision come to life.
Click to link to the Reel Delicious Website: LINK TO WEBSITE
Click to link to the Reel Delicious Facebook page: LINK TO FACEBOOK
Click to link to the Reel Delicious Instagram: LINK TO INSTAGRAM
Click to link to the Reel Delicious Twitter: LINK TO TWITTER
Below, you will find a chronological description of each part of this year long project.
After a successful campaign, thanks to generous donors from around the world, students shifted their attention to the creation of their own business. Working in eight teams, including: legal, finance, events, pledge perks, film, public relations, audio/visual, and cooking, students took on real-world tasks and responsibilities to make their vision come to life.
Click to link to the Reel Delicious Website: LINK TO WEBSITE
Click to link to the Reel Delicious Facebook page: LINK TO FACEBOOK
Click to link to the Reel Delicious Instagram: LINK TO INSTAGRAM
Click to link to the Reel Delicious Twitter: LINK TO TWITTER
Below, you will find a chronological description of each part of this year long project.
Food Truck Ethnographies
Students started the semester by doing ethnographic field work. Students went out in teams of 3-4 to interview food truck owners, employees, and customers about what it takes to run a successful food truck business in San Diego. Students experiences were documented in bilingual ethnographies, which can be found at this student created website: sdfoodtrucks.org
Food Truck Concept Development
After students completed their ethnographic field work, students turned their attention in pairs to creating innovative food truck concepts that met the needs of the San Diego community. Drawing on their research and engaging their creativity, students designed campaigns such as: Eh for Effort, a food truck specializing the Canadian foods, such as poutine; Primordial Bacon, a food truck featuring everythng bacon, including peanut butter and bacon sandwiches and popcorn cooked in bacon fat; and The Yard, a food truck that turns kids menu favorites into adult friendly delicacies, such as parmesan crusted chicken tenders. These concepts were turned into posters that were presented to a crowd of around 2,000 students, staff, and community members who weighed in on students ideas.
The Reel Delicious Kickstarter Campaign
In this next phase of the project, students drew from various concepts to create a new final idea that the whole team could get behind, a non-profit, student run food truck that promotes cultural understanding. The new truck would be named Reel Delicious, and each student would play a central role in creating and promoting a Kickstarter campaign, from designing the look and feel of the truck in the PR team to creating the Kickstarter video (check it out! http://kck.st/19dUNdG). The end product was a campaign that we all felt very proud of. Once launched, we had six weeks to promote the project. And while we were nervous, we had what every good entrepreneur needs to have, the belief we had a good idea and determination. In six weeks, with the help of over 400 amazing donors, our campaign was successful!
Running a Student-Run, Non-Profit Food Truck
Our campaign was completed in late January, and after being fully funded, our students re-divided into teams to tackle the creation of a business. While some committee names remained the same, cooking and legal, for example, students were provided the opportunity to switch off of the committees they were on the first semester and try something new. Furthermore, brand new committees were created, such as the truck and audio visual teams, which were responsible for selecting the best truck for our money and making sure it ran properly and setting up the sound and video components of Reel Delicious. Students worked reel-y hard (get it?) to get the truck up and running. In late May, we held our pre-launch party at the Digital Gym in San Diego.
Food Truck Related Work
foodtruckproject.pdf | |
File Size: | 9816 kb |
File Type: |
Food Truck Project & Deeper Learning! |
Click this LINK to access the article from Unboxed.
|