Food truck from Purdue Dining invites stopping by for a bite

November 12, 2015  


The Daily Bite

The Daily Bite from Purdue Dining & Catering serves lunch and dinner at various campus sites, offering its own menu. (Photo provided)
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This is not your grandfather's food cart. A complete kitchen serving hot and cold items occupies The Daily Bite, a food truck from Purdue Dining & Catering that is in circulation day by day for lunchtime and dinnertime at strategic spots around the West Lafayette campus. Being mobile adds considerably to Dining & Catering's coverage of the campus, serving staff, faculty and the growing residential student population.

Who and what

As with most food trucks trending nationwide, this one has its own menu and an edgy theme and look, says Tom Coleman, director of retail dining. Its newspaper-sounding name is backed up by portions of Exponent pages all over the warm reddish-orange body of the truck. The lettering of the name is in Old English type, which is used in the nameplate of many papers.

The menu has a "The Scoop" section with mac-and-cheese variations in specially made waffle cones and a "Hot Off the Press" section with sandwiches -- including the "to die for" popular favorite, the Obituary, which customers remember for its pulled pork, Gouda, rye and bacon surprise.

The top story in "The Scoop" is the Buffalo Chicken Mac, says Diana Thompson, multi-unit manager, who oversees the truck's daily operations. That item tosses chicken in buffalo sauce and arranges that in a cone with bleu cheese, celery and a base of mac and cheese. Dining & Catering makes the cones with complementary spices, savory not sweet. Main menu items are $4 to $5.50.

"Features" has interesting twists on cheese balls and tomato soup. "Extra, Extra!" has a side salad, a Nutella Stuffed Cookie and bottled drinks -- water and unsweetened, sweet, green and lemon tea.

Though the project was a team effort, Coleman gives particular credit to executive chef Bruce Haumesser and production chef Allie Kingery for their work on the menu.

When and where

Locations and schedules are being tried out and adjusted, but The Daily Bite is often along the east side of Purdue Armory (near Elliott Hall), at Smalley Center, at Agricultural Mall and in the Freehafer Hall parking area. One factor in choosing locations for its shifts is availability of a computer PIC connection to operate the cash register system. The Daily Bite accepts cash, credit, dining dollars and Boiler Express.

Hours are 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, 5-7:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, and 5:30-9:30 p.m. Sunday.

"Our goal is to get into underserved areas of campus," Coleman says. "It also gives our residential students another place to eat on campus. We anticipate operating the truck year-round" except for portions of winter break.

So far, he says, the lunch clientele has been about half employees and half students. In the evening, it's mostly students. The truck started operations Sept. 15.

A Facebook search of "The Daily Bite" leads to a page with general information and frequent notices of where the food truck will be. Coleman hopes to make the truck trackable using GPS.

The Daily Bite publishes its daily locations on Twitter (@PurdueDailyBite) and Facebook (Facebook.com/PurdueDailyBite), where additional information can be found including the menu and up-to-date hours of operation.

How and why

Two to four people work in the truck at a time, but plenty of preparation precedes each shift, Thompson says, including some work the day before at Harrison Grillé. Then each morning starts there at 8 a.m. Outside, the truck is plugged in.

"We have the ability to run on a generator for at least four hours," Thompson says. "The kitchen equipment runs on propane, and the generator runs on diesel."

The Daily Bite is 29.5 feet long excluding the back steps. It has freezers, coolers, fryers, a griddle and hot holding space.

The truck itself and the daily routine are the results of about a 1.5 years of planning by Purdue's chefs and retail dining people, who visited trucks in other cities and campuses, Coleman says. They also got pictures and data from the National Association of College & University Food Services.

Planners also got an assist from Radiological and Environmental Management, whose representatives helped developed the specs to assure efficiency and safety for the food and the workers.

"We're inspected through REM, as are all retail dining venues at Purdue," Thompson says, "and everything we use is commercial food service equipment."

The truck is resupplied during the day, but due to the popularity of the cones, the cone maker is being put on the truck. 

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