Old Skool Bus Events are absolutely DELIGHTED to have been awarded the Small Business Award by Corporate Vision Magazine for the ‘Most Innovative Event Catering Company – South East England!’

Since the business began in 2020 with the purchase of the first American school bus food truck, the company has developed a very long way. Initially three friends bought the mobile catering unit to use as a food van to support their charitable projects in lockdown, and to feed vulnerable groups of residents and NHS staff outside the local hospital.

As the event and hospitality industry opened up a little in 2021 they started to cater at some small events and weddings, and then onto serving food and drinks at larger events like the Brighton Marathon and some small festivals. They still held their focus on contributing to charitable projects too, but took on some bigger jobs and catering for higher numbers.

In Spring 2024, the three owners decided to go their separate ways, and the now sole Director Kate Packham, decided to be more innovative with the menus, the types of events the food truck would operate at, and even expanded by buying a second truck.

Innovation and Creativity

Kate’s vision wasn’t solely to pursue larger commercial projects and contracts, but also to try and encompass a deeper soul of the business, and to create new menus and company policies from her newly studied qualification in Nutrition & Health Coaching! The catering wasn’t purely ‘for profit’ focussed like many caterers, as they still worked alongside as many charitable organizations as possible, but now Kate also wanted to innovate the health and nutrition aspect of food consumption into the food.

With lots of local research in and around Brighton, the suppliers and ingredients were fine tuned, and now not only were the menus delicious and beautifully presented, but even the ‘fast food’ street menus were using fresh, locally sourced ingredients.

If you find Old Skool Bus Events trading with ‘Bella’ the food truck nowadays, you can be rest assured that even the burgers and giant hotdog sausages are made fresh by their local butcher, and the burger buns and hotdog rolls are baked fresh by their chosen baker!

The buses themselves shout out INNOVATION, and they have been converted in very clever ways to utilise their shape and to make their use as dynamic as possible. “Bella” the food truck has been converted into a fully fitted, drive in, plug and play mobile kitchen! Inside is kitted out better than most pub kitchens! With 6 fridges and a freezer for food & prep storage, a large flat top griddle, two double deep fat fryers, a large 6 ring range oven, full extractor system and heat lamps on the pass, it is a kitchen that not only serves street food at festivals, but full wedding menus too. The chefs can serve 100 guests at a wedding with beautiful canapes, a sharing feast, desserts and evening street food from that kitchen from that one well designed mobile kitchen! When they say it has everything but the kitchen sink… well it even has TWO of those!

The project to develop “Wolfie” is still mid-conversion at the moment, as the crazy busy summer season saw Old Skool Bus Events have to prioritise and focus on serving 40,000 meals at Glastonbury Festival to the crew for 9 weeks, and then come back to feed weddings and private parties, but the concept is almost there. Kate has designed a ‘bar lounge’ inside the second bus, equipped also with one newly covered brown leather driver’s seat of course! This truck has versatility to be not only a bar set up outside and the seating inside, but also can be set up with a food stall and BBQ outside to serve street food to go with the drinks. “Why have two mobile kitchen food trucks when you can have the second one a little different?” Kate says!

Old Skool Bus Events are thrilled to have been awarded the Corporate Vision Magazine Small Business Award for ‘Most Innovative Event Catering’ and plan to continue developing their innovative menus and policies.