ROCHESTER, N.Y. — More than 20,000 Rochester kids get free breakfast and lunch during the school year, but only about 8,000 make their way to summer feeding sites in the City when school is out. Foodlink is trying to fill the gap with food trucks that bring meals directly to kids in high-poverty neighborhoods.
Every weekday during the summer, Mr. John drives a Foodlink food truck to parks, playgrounds and splash pads across Rochester to make sure hungry kids get something to eat. “You’re the food truck guy?” a child asked. “Yea, I’m the food truck guy,” John said while passing out meals at Troup Street Park.
Foodlink officially helps feed more than 8,000 Rochester City School District kids in the summer, “a summer camp, a sports camp, an enrichment program, we’ve also got open sites where kids don’t have to be in a program but they have to eat at a certain time and at a certain location and this is kind of bridging the gap for everybody else,” explains Macie McGowan, Foodlink’s Vice President of Community Kitchen…