Rockville restaurant fighting food insecurity among students

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. ( DC News Now ) — Little Miner Taco’s new Rockville Town Square location opened in July, but it just threw its grand opening fiesta on Wednesday.

The restaurant celebrated its new initiative to donate 100 percent of the proceeds from kids’ meal sales to the Dine with Dignity program.

“I have a great chef who orders all of our stuff,” Little Miner Taco owner Kathy Voss said. “We get native spices and peppers from Mexico. Our meats are halal. We try to do local purveyors, fresh produce.”

Part of Little Miner Taco’s menu is a kid’s meal for only $3.

“We have a couple of options,” Voss said. “We do a plain cheese quesadilla, which comes with a side of rice and beans. We do a chicken quesadilla which comes with rice and beans, and then we do a chicken and rice dish with a little side of beans.”

The restaurant will donate money made from those kids’ meals to a cause meant to fight food insecurity.

“Every penny goes to — depending on where the store is, like here in Rockville Town Square, Montgomery County School District’s Dine with Dignity program, so that way it eliminates school lunch debt for those in need,” Voss said.

The Dine with Dignity program was started by the Montgomery County Public Schools Educational Foundation in 2018.

“We fundraise to ensure that families who can’t pay off their meal debt who eventually achieve free and reduced lunch status, we offset their meal debt, so they don’t have to worry about it and the school system doesn’t have to carry that debt,” MCPS Educational Foundation Executive Director Kristen Wong Callisto said.

The program has settled meal debt for more than 16,000 students since it started six years ago. Rockville Mayor Monique Ashton says eating lunch is vital to every student’s success.

“You cannot learn if you’re hungry,” Ashton said. “It’s very distracting. You can’t be your best. All of our children in this community deserve the right to reach their highest potential.”

The Dine with Dignity program’s goal is to raise $170,000 this school year to settle some of the unpaid meal debt accrued by students.

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