"Can I pay you for these?" several police officers asked Kimber Westphall. She stood next to a new food truck called Random Snacks of Kindness handing out free breakfast tacos.
"Really?" another asked. "These are free?"
Yes, there is such thing as a free breakfast, Westphall assured the men in blue and their coworkers at the Addison Police Department on a Tuesday morning. The Random Snacks of Kindness truck hands out free food -- no catch -- to people who need or deserve it, she explains.
The truck is owned by Executives in Action, a nonprofit that matches executives with charities who need help. The executives tend to be professionals who are between jobs and can offer senior-executive-level services -- strategic planning or consulting, let's say -- to charity groups who can't afford to hire large companies to do that kind of work. Executives in Action, headquartered in Addison, was founded in 2008.
The truck, however, has been on the streets for only a few weeks.
The Random Snacks of Kindness truck is meant to be a surprise: They roll up on Tuesday mornings to a police station, fire station, school or street corner and hand out free food.
On Tuesday, Oct. 27, for instance, the Executives in Action will roll over to a Dallas ISD elementary school and surprise the students and teachers. The week after, Nov. 3, they will visit a physical training facility that helps wounded warriors.
In colder months, they plan to stop at a DART station and hand out hot coffee or offer blankets to the homeless.
In addition to handing out freebies, the truck might also become "not just a dispensary for kindness, but a reception for kindness, too," Westphall says. They might ask for canned goods and then deposit them at a soup kitchen. They've also discussed taking in books and donating them to schools.
For now, organizers will not cook on the food truck, even though it is a kitchen on wheels. They'll partner with restaurants around Dallas-Fort Worth and some of the food will be donated, some won't.
Executives in Action Founders Ashlee and Chris Kleinert donated the food truck from their other business, Ruthie's Rolling Cafe.
Editor's note: Kimber Westphall occasionally writes freelance stories for GuideLive and The Dallas Morning News.
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