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Food

Adults can snag a sack lunch in Dallas this week — and help at-risk teens

As Dallas students head back to school, downtown Dallas restaurant Cafe Momentum wants to alleviate parental stress by selling brown-bag lunches for adults.

From Aug. 28 through Sept. 1, the cafe will host a pop-up in Dallas' Pegasus Plaza from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

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Each day will bring a gourmet take on a lunchtime favorite for just $7, like Monday's PBB&B Sandwich, with peanut butter, bacon and marinated blackberries. Wednesday's Ham & Cheese is a croissant sandwich with coffee-cured ham, brie and burnt honey mustard.

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This is the cafe's first-ever pop-up with its new food cart, built by nonprofit Better Block. "[It's] what I refer to as the world's first pedestrian food trailer," says Chad Houser, Cafe Momentum's founder, CEO and executive chef. "It's got that really pretty plywood look to it, but they cut it out to look like a little trailer park trailer."

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Houser hopes the cart can create a mobile version of the cafe to maximize working hours for the cafe's interns, who are teens recently released from juvenile detention.

Intern Malik Runnels (right) of Pleasant Grove serves hors d'oeuvres at Cafe Momentum's...
Intern Malik Runnels (right) of Pleasant Grove serves hors d'oeuvres at Cafe Momentum's grand opening in 2015. The first-of-its-kind restaurant in Dallas employs juvenile offenders and teaches them skills like cooking, dish washing and serving. (Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

"One of the things we’re really focused on at Cafe Momentum is hours of impact," Houser says. "The more opportunities that we create to be with [the interns] and around them, the more opportunities we have to create a greater impact. We don’t know what happens to them when they go home."

The cafe is a nonprofit organization that offers programming like group therapy and financial literacy classes in addition to the internship, which allows the teens to work in the kitchen and as servers in the downtown Dallas dining room. "We love to do the programs, but at the end of the day we’re conscious of the idea that the kids need to make money," Houser says.

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Launching this pop-up is a way to provide more working hours for the interns, as well as raise money for the cafe to be able to serve more youths. Houser is already thinking of other ways to maximize the cart's potential after this week's pop-up, tossing around ideas like serving pastries and coffee in the morning.

"The possibilities are endless, and I think this thing’s going to be a lot of fun."