School bus used to give students experience in the food industry

Normally, a school bus is meant to take students to and from the classroom, but at Cherry Creek Innovation Campus, a Colorado school bus has been transformed into a classroom.

The bus was donated, and the Tuchman Family Foundation donated $110,000 to take out the seats and replace them with all the food truck essentials. It's a kitchen on four wheels in the Cherry Creek School District.

The Campus Creations Food Bus is an extension of CCIC's Culinary Management program. Students cook up and serve breakfast and lunch to their classmates, to teachers and to others every day. On the day a CBS Colorado crew visited the bus, a team of construction workers were putting in orders.

Breakfast tacos are one of the students' specialties.

"I get the tortilla, I get the egg. We have fried plantains, bacon or chorizo, and then a little bit of cheese if you want," said senior Sophie Rubio, who is a food bus student.

The students take orders, charge $5 to $6 for a meal, and they work in an assembly line to put the orders together quickly to serve to their hungry customers. They are all valuable lessons learned in customer service.

"I think you can learn, like, people skills, how to interact with others, and just being under a lot of stress, because people do tend to be in a hurry when they are ordering," said junior Jacob Schneider.

It's all part of the district's effort to teach real world skills to students, and it's already making a difference.

"You get hands-on experience. You're not just sitting around and you're actually doing the work. And then you get experience, because most jobs nowadays require that you have some sort of experience in order to apply for that job," Schneider said. "You usually don't get that at such a young age."

The next step is to take the food bus to an event called STEAM-a-Palooza on Sept. 28, and then to high school football games.