Chronic Tacos and Offspring singer team up to dish out burritos for H.B. kids
Students and their families starting rolling through the parking lot at Perry Elementary School in Huntington Beach at 11 a.m. Thursday to pick up tortilla-wrapped treats for a special lunch.
It’s spring break in the Huntington Beach City School District, so two businesses with local roots put their heads together to fill a gap for students who may rely on supplemental lunches during the school year.
Restaurant chain Chronic Tacos approached Dexter Holland — a Huntington Beach resident, lead vocalist of the punk band the Offspring and owner of Gringo Bandito Hot Sauce — about the collaboration.
Together, they supplied 400 sack lunches consisting of a chicken or bean-and-cheese burrito, chips, salsa and a bottle of water.
The two conceived the idea a few weeks ago as a way to help during a week when school-sponsored lunch service is on hiatus, Chronic Tacos Chief Executive Michael Mohammed said Thursday.
“With it being spring break, there may be a need for meals for these kids,” Mohammed said. “This would be a good opportunity for us to give back to the community.”
“It’s so great to be able to partner with our good friends at Chronic Tacos and give back to the community that we’re both part of,” Holland told the Daily Pilot in a statement.
Chronic Tacos and Gringo Bandito Hot Sauce have partnered before, including at Sabroso, a summer festival in Dana Point featuring music, tacos and craft beer.
The Huntington Beach City School District has been serving 500 to 600 weekday lunches out of Perry and Peterson elementary schools while students are learning from home during campus closures resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, the district said.
Families of students who rely on the school-supplied supplemental meals have been able to pick up lunch at Perry Elementary between 10 and 11 a.m. or at Peterson between 11 a.m. and noon on school days, according to John Ashby, district director of child welfare. Ashby has been using the district’s social media pages as well as recorded phone calls to notify district families of the school-sponsored meals.
On Thursday, a line of cars with students inside crawled along toward Perry Elementary. Only 30 minutes in, more than half the burritos had been carted away.
District Supt. Gregg Haulk and board of trustees Vice President Bridget Kaub handed out bottled water under a pop-up tent in the school parking lot while taking the drive-up passengers’ lunch requests.
Ashby and trustee Shari Kowalke handed off the lunches as fast as two Chronic Tacos employees could pack the burritos into meal combos in the company’s food truck.
Anyone who arrived with a student younger than 18 could drive away with a meal.
Some arrived on bicycles, including Huntington Beach High School junior Logan Gil, 16, who rode his bike to Perry from downtown Huntington Beach. Logan, who said he had never eaten Chronic Tacos food before, requested a chicken burrito from Haulk and waited patiently while a few groups in cars were served.
With two brown sacks in their baskets, Logan and a friend rode off.
Chronic Tacos opened its first location in Newport Beach in 2002 and its second in Huntington Beach a few years later, Mohammed said. The company now has more than 60 locations, including franchises, across North America and Japan.
Aside from the school meals, Chronic Tacos has delivered food to hospital personnel working on the front lines of the effort to treat and contain the coronavirus.
“It’s a hard time for all business, especially in the food industry,” Mohammed said. “We’ve all felt the pain of it. But we’ve been in business a long time and we want to make sure we’ve given back in any way we can.”
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