In The News: Tiger Tailgate brings food carts to NHS

Written by: Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic

Booster club's solution to new state regulations on concessions is proving popular with fans

Gourmet soups, authentic Mexican street food, pulled-pork sandwiches and made-from-scratch ice cream are old hat when it comes to food truck plazas in Portland, farmer’s markets or even along Highway 99W in Newberg and Dundee.

But after a steady diet of hot dogs, hamburgers and pizza, such fare is practically cutting edge when it comes to high school football games.

Thanks to some clever problem solving by the Newberg Booster Club, that’s exactly what you’ll find outside the gates of Loran Douglas field for Friday night home games at Newberg High School this fall.

“It makes Newberg unique,” said NHS staffer and volunteer Sandi Byers. “I sit at the gate and do tickets and people from other schools were like, ‘This is so cool.’ Yep. It’s awesome.”

Turning the courtyard at the southern entrance of the school into a food carnival was a creative solution to a problem caused by an Oregon Senate bill regarding food safety regulations at concessions stands, which was passed in 2013 but is only now being enforced in 2015.

According to NHS Athletic Director Tim Burke, the school was told that in order to continue cooking things like hot dogs and hamburgers, it would have operate as a licensed restaurant. That would mean maintaining refrigerators on site and having volunteers get food handlers’ licenses, among other things. The Newberg Booster Club, which runs concessions, felt that wasn’t feasible.

The club has since learned that other schools, like McMinnville and Tualatin, have applied for temporary 90-day permits to run their outdoor concessions during football season. But according to booster club concessions chair Janet DuFour, that just wouldn’t be feasible for Newberg, in part because of the facility’s size and because it is open year-round.

“When you’re working with an all-volunteer group, it’s just tough to think now we’re going to operate like a restaurant,” said Judi Croft, who has spearheaded the effort with Dufour. “So we shifted gears and said, ‘Can we make a better situation out of this?’ We had a brainstorm and we thought food carts are so big, what if we brought one here? Then it was ‘Is one enough?’”

The Tiger Tailgate is not limited to football games and kicked off modestly with just a couple of vendors at Tuesday and Thursday night soccer and volleyball matches.

Cream Northwest, an artisanal ice cream truck based in Newberg, and La Cocina de AngeLee, a Mexican foot truck based out of Lafayette, were then on hand Sept. 11 for the first home football game of the season versus Grants Pass. Both vendors proved to be a hit, as Byers reported that La Cocina had a line of four to five people the whole night, while there has been a buzz on campus about Cream Northwest ever since.

“Other schools come here and they’re surprised,” said Keely Herrera, who works in the La Cocina truck. “They say, ‘I wish I had this at my high school.’ They think it’s so neat. Parents get out of work and they don’t worry about having to make food. They just come here.”

Cream Northwest owners Mike and Helen Roberts are less than three months into their venture and have found Tiger Tailgate to be an easy way to introduce themselves as a new business.

“The football game did really well,” Roberts said. “It’s been quiet other days, but we still come in as part of the community.”

The Sept. 25 home game versus West Linn was the Tiger Tailgate’s big coming out party, as all seven of its vendors — La Cocina, Cream Northwest, Wetmore Quality Dogs, Storr’s BBQ, Ye Olde Pizza Shoppe, Dutch Bros. Coffee, and Souper Natural — were on hand.

West Linn fans Dave and Shannon Johnson had been to Loran Douglas Field for the junior varsity football game the day before and did exactly what organizers have been hoping for: showing up early specifically because they knew they could eat.

“I’d rather do this than what we’re doing,” Dave Johnson said. “I think you’d attract more people to come to the game if you had this available.”

Both ate at Souper Natural, which served a variety of soups, from corn chowder and sweet potato curry to southwest chicken and rice, and gourmet sandwiches, including a Caprese grilled cheese with fresh buffalo mozzarella, basil oil and tomatoes.

Tiger Tailgate was actually the debut for owner Heidi Liebowitz’s Souper Natural truck, as her frozen soup stand has been an anchor at the Beaverton farmer’s market for years.

It was a big get for the booster club, which sent out invitations to vendors, who pay a relatively low fee to operate at various events for the fall season, and signed contracts on a first-come, first-served basis.

“If this works out well financially, we’ll come back,” Liebowitz said. “The organizers are fantastic. Big events like this we’ll be happy to come to.”

Friday’s homecoming game versus Lakeridge promises to be a busy night for vendors, who are adjusting to the new situation just like the booster club is as the organizer. It will re-evaluate the set up at the end of the fall and hopes to continue on by signing vendors to contracts for the winter sports season.

“We’re all learning, but so far the feedback has been very good,” Croft said. “They realize we’re in that infant stage. It’s a process that we’re trying to make better. We really like this model and want it to be our standard. We want to have it in the winter and the spring, like this is what Newberg does, the Tiger Tailgate.”