ORANGE PARK – Clay County high school students are being treated to an entirely-new option for lunch this year and surprisingly, it’s not coming from the cafeteria.

Costing the school district $162,000, the district food truck, dubbed The Filling Station, will be treating students at a different high school each day to unique meals they can’t get anywhere else during school hours. According to Ridgeview High School senior, Lindsey Daniels, it’s one of the best meals she’s ever had at the school.

“This is my first time getting food from [The Filling Station],” Daniels said. “It’s really good and it’s a great option for something else at lunch.”

On Aug. 31, Daniels found herself enjoying a Tex Mex Rice Bowl, which includes Mexican-style rice, romaine lettuce, seasoned chicken, black beans, corn, queso cheese sauce, fresh cilantro, tortilla chips, and a topping of her choice which could have been either Pico de Gallo, salsa or guacamole.

While Daniels chose the Tex Mex Rice Bowl, the Pulled Pork Cheesy Fries seemed to be the most popular item among students that day. This meal consists of baked fries, pulled pork, cheese sauce, jalapenos, sour cream, barbecue sauce and tortilla chips.

If neither of those meals fit their fancy, students were free to order a staple among tex-mex lovers: Nachos Supreme. As the name would imply, this dish consists of tortilla chips with all the toppings one could think of with a serving of seasoned turkey slathered on top.

Each month, the menu will change to keep things fresh for students. According to Susan Glover, the Clay County School District’s director of Food and Nutrition Services, students can always expect to find healthy alternatives, in this case the turkey, as part of the meal.

“Just like with all of our meals, our goal is to give the students something that’s not only tasty, but healthy as well,” Glover said.

According to Glover, the food truck is nothing more than an arm of the district’s cafeteria system. She said both the cafeteria and The Filling Station get all of their supplies fresh and from the same source. On top of that, the three employees manning the truck are Food and Nutrition Services employees. Furthermore, every meal at The Filling Station costs the same as a meal from the cafeteria – $2.25. And just like the cafeteria, the food truck will provide help to those who can’t afford the full price or need it for free.

“At the end of the day, [The Filling Station] really is just an extension of our school cafeterias,” Glover said. “It’s just another option available to students who want something different.”

So far, the truck seems to be a hit, according to Glover. On Aug. 31, when the 11:40 a.m. lunch session began, all of the seniors sprinted to the truck to get in line – seniors had won a competition at a recent pep rally and as a result, they were the grade level that got to eat at the truck that day. The only real downside to the food truck currently is that it can only accommodate about 60 students each lunch session, of which there are multiple each day. Glover said because each of the meals must be prepared ahead of time, which ensures kids aren’t spending half their lunch period waiting for their food to be ready, there can only be a limited number of students served.

“...that’s okay though,” Glover said. “Every student will get their chance to eat at [The Filling Station].”

Just as excited as Glover and the kids about the new food truck is Clay County Superintendent Addison Davis.

“When we started to have the vision, determining what the benefits of bringing a food truck to the students would be, I never knew walking up to the food truck, and seeing kids sprint in line to get to this new innovative menu, how awesome it would be,” Davis said.

“What a fresh new way to engage kids and feed them healthy meals every day and what a great opportunity to be innovative in our approach to school food nutrition. When you look at this food truck, this is only the start of it, the start of a differentiated lunch menu, but more importantly, now, we begin our next phase.”

The next phase for the food truck is its inclusion in Clay County school culinary programs. In these programs, students across the county are taught how to cook, how to prepare meals, how to best serve a meal and everything that happens in between. Davis plans for the food truck to be an extension of that program in the coming months.

“Now we let it grow legs to our culinary programs, to let students interact with it and learn hospitality among their cohorts,” Davis said. “We want this in our business pathways too. Students can be actively involved to learn how to operate a business, how to prepare culinary items to customer needs, how to develop a menu and overall, practice their craft.”

Davis did not have a timeline of when the food truck would be integrated into school culinary programs but said it will happen. Beyond normal school hours, Davis and Glover both hope to see The Filling Station positioned at sports games throughout the county with students eventually standing on the other side of the truck’s serving windows.

According to Davis, the food truck would allow students to not only learn how to operate this business and prepare food for customers, but it would be a great way to earn volunteer hours as well.