The Chef Behind Green Tidings

At this point in the year, almost everyone on the University of Maryland campus has heard of Green Tidings, the mobile food truck that sells farm-to-table food for students and faculty to enjoy. Although many people know about the food truck, who keeps the truck open and makes the food everyone has been raving about?

William Rogers joined Good Tidings Catering, the UMD dining service, as the executive chef in 2011. It was around this time that the dining department started to discuss the idea of a food truck. After a year of assembling a team, Rogers launched the sustainable food truck, Green Tidings.

Rogers, along with five other employees, including supervisor Eddie Thomas, are in charge of the truck and its daily tasks. Although Rogers mostly works in the Good Tidings Catering prep kitchen in Stamp Union preparing the food to be sold on the truck, he is a major force in providing the delicious food and is thoroughly enjoying the role that he plays.

Having worked in a small environment like this before, Rogers is not daunted by the limited space, but rather sees it as a challenge. To keep the truck running effectively,  golf carts run back and forth between the kitchen and the truck, making it easy to replenish food and serve about 300 people on an average day.

Since Green Tidings is backed by Good Tidings, which also caters all the suites for football, basketball and lacrosse, the catering and food truck teams work closely together to maximize efficiency and productivity.

The chef explained that this is the most challenging time of the year for his team because football and basketball are going on at the same time, in addition to keeping the food truck running.

“My sous chef, Tom Schraa, does a fantastic job assisting me in managing all three of these venues and our team does a great job,” said Rogers.

With gluten-free and vegetarian options and a menu that changes every two weeks, Rogers explained his inspiration comes from both the seasons and his food vendors. Rogers has personal relationships with his seafood and meat vendors, who help him purchase sustainable products. “Our main focus is providing high quality beautiful food with great service,” explained Rogers.

Rogers’ supervisor on the truck, Eddie Thomas, agreed with this idea, explaining that his favorite part of working on the truck is “the quality of food, for sure. Everything is basically as fresh as we can get it and I find that to be very awesome.”

Chef Rogers also explained that his favorite part of this project was being there from the ground up. Working with the maintenance team at the beginning, Rogers was a part of designing the food truck kitchen and its flow of service.  He was also a part of the opening food truck team, working on the truck every day in June to work out the kinks and improve service for the upcoming fall semester.

Since Rogers spends most of his day doing the prep working Stamp, when it came to discussing the only hard part of working on the truck all day, Thomas gave the best answer.  He explained, “telling a costumer tat we have sold out of something is definitely the hardest part for me.”

“Opening over the summer and working through all of the bumps is why we have had the success we have enjoyed during the fall semester,” said Rogers.

Green Tidings has been a huge success on campus, no doubt because of the highly devoted staff. “Cooking on the truck is a positive challenge. With limited space, we create menus to maximize the space and cooking equipment we have. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the fall, but it’s a fun atmosphere,” said Rogers.