Lily Shi

Spencer Mak (12) orders food at Fresh Catch Poke outside of the Rothschild Performing Arts Center. Fresh Catch Poke ran out of ingredients at 12:40 p.m. and made 57 more orders than initially planned.

All four food trucks offered to students and faculty at Culture Week on Wednesday ran out of food during lunch, resulting in some students not receiving food in time or eating at Manzanita instead.

Culture Week, an annual celebration of the diversity of the Harker community, features one day where students can order food from a selection of food trucks with a variety of cuisines. This year, four food trucks visited campus and arrived just before lunch began at 11:20 a.m.

Wonk’s Street Tacos was the first truck to run out of food. According to an employee at the truck, Harker ordered 125 entrees. Before closing, however, they made an additional 25 orders with extra ingredients.  

Even as Wonk’s Street Tacos shut down, other trucks removed some items from their menus due to popularity and ingredient shortages. Fresh Catch Poke was the next truck to stop taking orders after running out of ingredients at around 12:40 p.m. They planned for 100 orders but took 157.

“Some of the culture booths had food — the Indian culture booth had samosas, and also there’s food in Manz, so we’re probably just going to go there and get food,” Alvira Agarwal (10), who had just left the line of the Indian Express food truck, said. “I’m kind of disappointed, but we’re going to go check later near the end of this period to see if there’s still food there.

The next food truck to shut down was Pupusa Lady. A worker announced that they had sold out of food at 1:02 p.m., and there were still students waiting to receive their orders as lunch ended at 1:25 p.m.

“I think that when the food trucks started, two of the trucks definitely had a lot more people than the other trucks,” Frosh adviser and Student Diversity Coalition adviser Jeanette Fernandez said. “I don’t think many people know what pupusas are (a Salvadorian dish) so this one didn’t have a long line while the tacos and poke did. When you order food trucks, you don’t order unlimited [meals]; you have to tell them ‘This is a certain amount,’ and [those trucks] were really popular.”

There were further delays in lines since Lalkhan’s Indian Express food truck needed approval from Harker before taking orders above their initial 100 budgeted entrees. The truck later closed their line at 1:08 p.m., and they were not able to serve some students at the end of that line due to running out of food. In the end, Lalkhan’s Indian Express served 70 more entrees than the ordered amount of 100.

Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Student Diversity Coalition Adviser Brian Davis reflected Fernandez’s statement that many students flocked to certain trucks, which caused lines to back up and food to run out faster.

“Our goal was not to limit the amount; [it was] so that people can have different options to get exposed to different things,” Davis said. “It’s not more so a shortage; we had a capped number so that there were many different options.”

Faculty ordered food first starting at around 11:10 a.m., and each faculty member received two tickets while students received one each. Seniors began ordering food at 11:20 a.m., juniors at 11:35 a.m., sophomores at 11:55 a.m. and frosh at 12:10 p.m. 

The lower school and middle school campuses also had food trucks available to students, but they used a preordering system to manage crowds and plan out the number of meals required. Davis mentioned that SDC may bring preordering to the upper school in the future so food trucks can be better prepared to serve students.

“We’ll probably do preorders for sure, and then based on those numbers, we can give trucks those numbers that way they know how to prepare,” Davis said. “I don’t really know what all the discrepancies were for them; I just learned this all in real time, but maybe having them arrive even earlier.”