Bakersfield College’s decision to bring outside food vendors, such as Pita Paradise and California Hot Dog, on campus has become a welcomed alternative food source that benefits both the students and the vendors.

Marisol Santiago, an employee of Pita Paradise, said that she was contacted by Eric Sabella, manager of Food Services at BC, to come on to campus. “Eric Sabella from food services. He reached out to us and asked if we would like to be on campus once or twice a week, and we agreed to come on Mondays and Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.”

According to Santiago, Pita Paradise’s contract is on a semester basis, and has to be renewed each semester.

Santiago claimed that she loves coming on campus to serve food. “It’s very nice, it’s totally different from being downtown. Its busier, especially because you have students switching from one class to another so you have to be quicker, but we love it, we enjoy what we do and we have good responses from customers,” she said.

Santiago said she hopes to continue coming on campus for as long as possible.

Bakersfield College student Shena Duarte, 18, said that having food trucks come to campus is a good thing for the students. “It’s pretty convenient, and they have really good choices of food. It’s pretty cheap too, I really like it a lot.”

Marc Perez, 20, also felt that having food trucks on campus was a good thing for students. “It’s a good alternative place to get food, you get variety. You’re not stuck with cafeteria food, you have options,” Perez said.

Nichole Simpson, owner of California Hot Dog and former BC student, said that she was also contacted by Eric Sabella from Food Services to come on to campus. “We were contacted by the food department, Eric Sabella. He said that we have a lot of students on campus this year and that they wanted some vendors from out in the community to spice it up a bit and give people different options since there are so many people and so much traffic in the cafeteria,” Simpson said.

Simpson said that like Pita Paradise, she also has a temporary contract with BC, which runs until the end of the fall semester. Simpson said that she has received tons of positive feedback from students during her time on campus.

“Everybody has been really excited about the convenience of just walking by and grabbing it, we’re out here like I said 10-4 so we’ve got different periods coming all throughout the day. We’ve got gourmet hotdogs so everyone enjoys the different options,” she said.

Yvette Avellano, 19, believes including food trucks on campus is both a good and bad thing. “In a way it’s a bad thing, but at the same time it’s a good thing because it gives people options. The school is definitely going to lose money, but at the end of the day people have their options and that’s up to them if they want to eat the cafeteria food or not,” Avellano said.

The Rip reached out to Eric Sabella, manager of Food Services, for an interview. Sabella has not responded as of the publication of this article.

Out of 20 students polled about whether or not they liked having the food trucks on campus, 18 said yes, and two said no.