Eat Food. Pay Up. Give Back

New Haveners can feed themselves dinner for $34 at Restaurant Week this year —then feed a hungry person two more meals for another $1.

That’s the idea behind a new “#buckforatruck initiative” that’s part of this year’s prixe-fixe ​“Restaurant Week” extravaganza, which runs Oct. 30 through Nov. 3 and offers special deals at eateries in town.

Twenty-seven New Haven restaurants are participating in the effort. Sponsored for the first time by Citizens Bank, #buckforatruck proceeds will help stock a new, 26-foot refrigerated food truck for the Connecticut Food Bank. While this is the third year that diners can choose to donate an extra dollar, the truck is new.

Representatives of the event’s sponsors — Citizens Bank, Market New Haven, the Connecticut Food Bank and the City of New Haven — unveiled the plan in a press conference Tuesday at City Hall.

As part of the Food Bank’s network of community programs, the truck will feed up to 22,000 Connecticut families, said Food Bank spokesperson Paul Shipman. That equals more than 32,000 miles and 1,500 hours each year on the road, he added — on top of the 150,000 people whom the bank feeds per month.

The truck will also give the Food Bank a new mobile capacity, allowing it to deliver fresh produce, dairy, frozen meats, and nonperishables to up to six community agencies per day. 

“We’ll make good use of that truck every day,” said Food Bank CEO Bernie Bandeau, joking that he would try to buy friends and colleagues lunch — plus an extra buck per person — at each of the 27 sites during restaurant week’s six days.

“This event comes at a time when we’re realizing that we’ve had, over the past 10 years, a pretty dramatic increase in hunger and food insecurity … We have to be concerned over the long term. We have to have more awareness. It’s very very important,” Bandeau said

The rate of food insecurity in Connecticut — people who go without meals at least once a month because they can’t afford them — is up to 13.1 percent, according to statistics released last week. Beaudreau said that the new truck will add desperately needed resources to feed hungry families in real time. 

“We serve 18,000 people every month,” he said. ​“So thank you for making this city aspire to be hunger free.”

To encourage diners to contribute that extra dollar, Market New Haven Marketing Manager Bruno Baggetta explained after the event, staff and volunteer representatives from the Connecticut Food Bank will go into restaurants during the next month to give abridged ​“Hunger 101” seminars to the front-of-house waitstaff, priming them to talk about food insecurity with patrons who come out for Restaurant Week.