Walk down any busy street of a city, and you’ll hopefully find a food truck that best fits your appetite. Becoming increasingly popular among urban dwellers, these mobile restaurants serve everything from burgers and fries to tacos and nachos and even lobster rolls.
However, one food truck won’t serve meals to their customers — but they’ll graciously accept them.
Finnegans beer launched their “Reverse Food Truck” in March to help feed the hungry. Their plan? To travel around Minnesota in their green vehicle until October, with the goal of collecting $50,000 worth of cash or credit card donations and non-perishable items. But that’s not all.
According to their Facebook page, the beer company (which sells a blonde ale and an Irish amber) says 100 percent of their profits will go towards feeding the hungry. They also began a social media campaign to keep people in the loop as to where the food truck will be stationed every day, according to ABC News.
The Reverse Food Truck has also created campaigns to increase its donations among passersby. One photo that Finnegans tweeted conveyed the message that you could win free beer for a month if you made a donation.
Jacquie Berglund, CEO of Finnegans, Inc. says the organization is not only pushing to increase its donations, but they are also partnering up with farmers in the area.
“In addition to raising funds, and collecting non-perishables, we’re also supporting local growers to get organic produce to those in need — and we have a lot of farmers in the area!” she tells ABC News. “So the wealth that we create in the community goes back to the community.
In partnership with the Emergency Foodshelf Network’s Harvest for the Hungry Program, Finnegans beer’s Reverse Food Truck has raised approximately 5,700 pounds of produce that’s already been delivered to the hungry.
But even if you can’t run to the Reverse Food Truck in time, you can always make a difference by donating using a virtual food menu. The Finnegans website provides a menu that shows you how much of a difference your gift will make. Donate $10 and you’ve just provided someone with food for five days; donate $100 and you can feed a family of four for two weeks.
How are local patrons reviewing the Reverse Food Truck? “This is a new thing for me, but as soon as I saw it, I came right up and [threw] some money in it,” Jacob Ciuraru told NPR. “A little bit goes a long way sometimes.”
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