Harvard-Westlake's Food Truck Line Kept Growing, With Him in It

I have catered one event in my life, the youngest's sixth birthday, for eleven children, with two hours and a Costco. I also had to refund a child. He wanted the blue cupcake.

By October 2022 the council promised that this year's trucks would be bigger and better, with fewer visits, higher quality. The Habit Burger Grill arrived, $10 for a meal with your student ID. A sophomore described the experience of the line with the precision of a physicist: "The line somehow kept getting longer and longer even though I was in it."

That is not a line. That is a philosophy.

A classmate who reached the front delivered a review of the burger: good, exactly what she expected, neither great nor bad. And then the most balanced piece of criticism I have ever read, from a student who didn't buy anything. Her eleventh-grade best friend had offered her a single fry. It was actually pretty good, she said, "so maybe it was worth it." But the cafeteria has fries too, which are pretty good, "so maybe it wasn't worth it."

One fry, two verdicts. She will make a superb judge.

In January 2023 Joe's Pizza came back, $5 for a slice and a soda, $10 for two. The organizer, by now a senior, explained what it takes: find a vendor that can meet the time constraint and the number of servings, negotiate reasonable prices, then handle "the contracts, certificate of insurance and payment." The council was still working, she said, on the overall efficiency of running outside vendors through a lunch period.

A high school senior knows what a certificate of insurance is. I learned at forty-one, when the youngest's birthday party venue asked me for one, and I said I would check with the cupcakes.