With schools closed for the summer, the city's Office of School Food is finding creative ways to try to reach the hundreds of thousands of kids who rely on free meals. NY1 education reporter Lindsey Christ explains.

You can find almost any kind of food served by truck these days, but you usually have to pay for it. 

Not with this truck. It serves food for free to anyone under the age of 18, courtesy of the Department of Education.

"Over the summers, this can be the time when students are the hungriest, when kids are the hungriest, because they're not in schools every day and so they're not getting the free breakfast and lunch," said Deputy Schools Chancellor Elizabeth Rose.

The federal government continues to pay for meals in the summer, and there are more than 800,000 school-aged children who qualify in the city. But the problem has always been reaching the students.

So, in addition to serving summer meals in hundreds of public school buildings, the city has tried to bring the food directly to the kids, which means libraries, pools, summer camps and parks.

That's how the Department of Education got into the food truck game. It now runs four trucks, one of which is in Chinatown.

"It's really nice having it here because it wasn't here before, and now we just walk here and they like to play in the park, so they can eat, too. It's really good," said one young woman.

The truck has been in Sara D. Roosevelt Park all summer, seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The staff has been very busy. On weekdays, they serve more than 300 meals a day, and on the weekends, more than 400 meals a day. 

All together, the four trucks will serve about 200,000 meals this summer.

They also serve as an advertising and recruitment tool.

"They let people know that we have a summer meals program," Rose said.

Many of the families at the Chinatown truck say they come every day. One three-year-old girl we met got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the truck.

On Monday, a father helping his daughter eat her lunch said it was their fifteenth day in this country. He was surprised to find the free food.

"Americans are so generous," he said.