SALT LAKE CITY — It's a time of year when many in the community look for opportunities to give back. In Salt Lake City, that includes the operators of several, popular food trucks.
During the summer, this tight knit community of business owners are so busy they rarely have the opportunity to get together.
But one Facebook conversation was all it took to get a half dozen of them together to help feed hundreds of homeless individuals during Thanksgiving week.
“You know people support us and this is why we call it a food hug, it’s just this is what we can do to give back," explained Ranea Johansen of Yoshi's Food Truck.
"Utah loves food trucks, and they support us," said Ruben Sauyun of Bomb Dilla food truck. "I mean, speaking for myself and for everybody I think the love for food trucks is real big here in Utah.
And like I said why not give back the opportunity when you have the opportunity?”
After a brief conversation, Johansen and Sauyun pulled together various food trucks to commit to serving at least 100 lunches outside of each of the Catholic community resource centers.
"We just wanted to do it on an off day that we thought, just an extra special something we could do for them,” explained Johansen.
The group decided to serve the meals two days before Thanksgiving and leaders with Catholic community services said the timing was perfect.
"Communities helping other people out! Which is great and it’s good for the soul and it’s a good break for the guys here because they’re getting something different that we can’t do in-house,” said Jeff Stant, who works as the Assistant Kitchen Manager at Catholic community services.
The Food Truck owners hope this act of service becomes a tradition every year.
In total, the six food trucks came together to serve more than 800 meals to some of Utah's most vulnerable populations.
