Nice Food

A nonprofit, pay-what-you-can food truck. Opening in Louisville, Ky the spring of 2021

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What’s on your menu?

Nothing! Nice Food is currently in the start-up phase of our operation which means we are not serving food and do not have a truck yet. Looking forward though, this is a question we will get asked often and the answer will be more complicated than saying we serve pizza or Thai food.

Nice Food will never have a set menu, it will be in flux depending on food donations we receive as well as the season in which we operate. For summer and spring meals will be lighter and zestier than they would be in the winter: bulky salads, fresh fruit and veggie sides, light meals that are healthy and refreshing. However, winter and fall will play host to heartier meals like soups and chili that are filling and warm.

Further, food donations from grocery stores, farmers markets, individual donors, as well as the food we can buy will change the way our menu looks and will require us to have multiple options always available to cycle through so you can always expect to find something that you like on our menu.

[nicefoodky]

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville (luh-vul), Kentucky is the largest city in the state with a population of 766,757 people in the Louisville Metro. Louisville is the city that Nice Food will operate in come 2021. The city is already host to over 80 food trucks that serve a variety of food from Thai to Greek to hotdogs as well as and a handful of pay-what-you-can restaurants, and we cannot wait to be serving alongside them all.

So, why did Nice Food choose Louisville?

Louisville, being the most populated city in the state, also is home to the highest number of food insecure people: 100,450, according to Feed America (2019), or over 13% of the population. Because we are a helpful food truck and because we will help alleviate the stress of food insecurity and join the fight to end hunger, we decided to attack it in the communities where it is most severe.

Further, Louisville is the most central to other large metro areas within the state being only an hour and a half from Lexington, Bowling Green, Owensboro and Cincinnati (Ky side). While our main hub of operation will be in Louisville the location offers us the opportunity to travel to other cities easily to spread our work and mission with others.

[nicefoodky]

Food trucks?

There is a lot of effort being given to the fight against food insecurity. Pay-what-you-can restaurants are open and serving around the country in Colorado, Texas, California, and even here in Kentucky! Food banks are distributing food and resources to people around their communities all over the world. Communities are coming together and helping some of their most vulnerable, those facing food insecurity. However, there will always be gaps in service due to operation times, service area distribution, and limited resources and people.

In Louisville there is a collection of pay-what-you-can restaurants and shops in the Portland neighborhood, the Table being the most well known. However, there exists a gap in service outside of the Portland neighborhood because these brick-and-mortar businesses do not have the ability to bring their service to people. Instead, the people in need have to make their way to the restaurants. By taking the service and the pay-what-you-can model and making it mobile, Nice Food has the opportunity to serve people who could not usually access it in Portland and fill a gap in service.

We are a food truck so that people who need a meal do not also need a car to make it to our door. We want to meet the folks who need us where they are at.

[nicefoodky]

Pay-what-you-can?

Whenever we tell people we are a nonprofit food truck using a pay-what-you-can model so that anyone can eat with us regardless of their ability to pay, well, we get some strange looks and a lot of questions. One is, what in tarnation does pay-what-you-can mean?

The pay-what-you-can model has been utilized by restaurants across the United States to eliminate fiscal barriers that limit access to food. For Nice Food, this looks like a menu with no set or suggested prices and a two-market system

So, if we don’t have or require prices you probably wonder how it’s possible for us to stay open? Nice Food, like our p-w-y-c predecessors, trust that people that can afford to pay for their food with money will do so and that some will even pay more to cover the cost of meals that can then be donated to those who cannot pay with money. Further, we decided that as a start-up we shouldn’t include set or suggested menu prices. That way customers are not limited by the numbers they see in front of them.

Shockingly, we do not give meals away for free. We have a three-option payment system. Our first option is an unrestricted monetary donation. Our second option is volunteering time; customers can compensate for the cost of food by donating an amount of their time for service to Nice Food which can include activities like washing the truck or doing dishes. Our third option is to ‘take a ticket, tell a friend,’ also known as free advertising about Nice Food; this helps the food truck attract more business and also spreads awareness of our mission to people who otherwise would not be aware. We use a three-option payment system because all people have inherent dignity and can always contribute something of value, their contribution just doesn’t have to be money.

Like we said before, we also run a two-market system. This means that we serve two groups of people. Our two markets are commercial and service. Our commercial market are people that can contribute monetarily to our mission. Our service market are people that can support our mission through service. Both are necessary for our mission to succeed, one cannot exist without the other. We start with our commercial market, raising money through donations so that we can then accept other forms of payment in exchange for food and service.

Pay-what-you-can is a model that is seeing a rise in popularity in recent years. In Louisville alone, there are a number of restaurants using this system, specifically in the Portland neighborhood. But, matching this with a food truck we hope to bring this to all of Louisville in the near future!

[nicefoodky]

Howdy!

We are Nice Food!

As our bio says we are a food truck that will be opening in Louisville in 2021 and we are pumped to be opening in a few short months. We wanted to start out by saying why we created Nice Food and why we are on Tumblr. Nice Food strives to be a helpful food truck using a pay-what-you-can model so that anyone can eat with us, regardless of their ability to pay. We also want other people to build up their communities and do awesome things to help each other, so we are documenting our experiences here from the beginning!

Hunger is a systemic issue that in 2019 plagued more than 37 million people living in the United States, according to Feed America (https://www.feeding america.org/hunger-in-america). It is hard to imagine 37 million people. Something more concrete is that every community in the United States struggles with hunger as a result of food insecurity -- every single one. No one is safe from hunger and food insecurity; but, some communities in our nation are more vulnerable than others: low-income households, communities of color, single-income families, individuals affected by drug abuse, and many other descriptors for the housed and houseless. Hunger and food insecurity are what Nice Food fights against, the people affected by these issues are why.

We have big dreams. One dream I want to really dive into is that Nice Food will grow from a single food truck into a state-wide campaign. Nice Food will not end hunger and demolish food insecurity on its own. Two small-town, white guys from rural Kentucky cannot do that. However, a state-wide grassroots coalition can. But, how does this start for us? We seek to empower communities that we exist in and provide assistance and guidance for those desiring to join the fight. One way we want to do this is to document our experiences as we dive into the world of nonprofits and pay-what-you-can restaurants which leads us to this Tumblr blog.

Thanks for reading this far down and we hope you will stay engaged and interact with us during our journey as we build upon our work and dreams towards a better world for everyone!