Meals On Wheels

Everyone knows the cliché ice cream truck songs that signify the bliss of soon to be melted ice cream and sticky hands during a hot summer day, but what if you had that same blissful feeling upon catching site of the semi-trailer that has been your kitchen for two and a half months, with or without the ice cream part?

Lost? I would imagine you to be so. I'm talking about the life and dining experiences of drum & bugle corps. Don't know what a drum corps is? Think of a marching band
on steroids that tours the nation during the summer months comprised of young adults 18-21. Thats a drum corps.

Drum corps travel by charter bus with up to four buses, support vehicles and up to two semi-trucks (one for equipment, the other a mobile kitchen). Drum corps stay at local schools everyday to rehearse and then move on to the next show or rehearsal site. Chances are, a drum corps has stayed at a school near you.

When traveling across the country in a convoy fashion, like drum corps do, a viable way to feed those involved must be found. That issue has been solved by a mobile kitchen on wheels: a converted semi-tractor trailer. It has all the essentials of a kitchen: freezer, refrigerator, storage, cook tops, a giant griddle (that can double as a grill), two convection ovens, counter space, industrial sinks, water tanks, drink tanks and anything for a kitchen you could imagine. This allows the volunteer cook crews to provide home cooked full meals to the participants wherever and whenever necessary. And believe me they do a wonderful and incredibly challenging job.

Drum corps is an intense musical and athletic activity. It requires you to be in your peak physical condition to be able to sprint around and across a football field during the intensity of the eleven minute and thirty seconds of performance. Since you rehearse in a performance level setting all day [a typical day will be mapped out later] you need high quality foods to fuel your body and keep you healthy. This is achieved by making sure the meals cooked are healthy and filling and contain nutritious items, especially fruits, vegetables, and high in protein and carbs. Water as well as Gatorade is also consumed in extreme amounts through out the day.

Now you may be saying, that this is all well and good, but as I explain what a typical day is like you may grow to understand the importance and awesomeness that this mobile kitchen truly is. A typical day starts at around 0700 am with wake up, hopefully after a few solid hours of sleep on the gym floor of the school your staying (depending on the length and time of the journey from the previous day's show/rehearsal facilities). You would then eat breakfast and by 0800 am be out at the practice field getting ready for some sort of stretch/run procedures. After that rehearsal begins. You would rehearse till about noon, eating a midday meal and then returning to the football field again. rehearsing now till about four or five pm. at that time you would shower, pack and load the buses and trucks and eat another meal. Once the corps is situated you would travel to the show site, unload and warm -up, perform the show, relax for a short time, eat the evening meal and prepare to travel to the next destination. normally a show ends around 10pm or later. That means corps pull out from the stadium at 11pm or later. You can see why learning how to sleep on a bus is key.


Since you now know the basic premise of a day, lets break the meals down in detail. a normal person lets say needs 2000 calories to function in a day. Multiply 2000 by 2 and you get 4000, thats the average amount of calories that person would need to function while competing with a drum corps. It isn't as easy as you think. Especially since the drum corps season runs from the middle of May till the middle of August. Three months of grueling rehearsals in the summer sun and heat. On average a drum corps spends about $100,000 on food for the summer. That covers breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack (the 4th meal after the show) for about 200 people that travel with the corps at any given time. A division I drum corps can have up to 135 competing individuals, besides that there is support staff and teaching staff, as well as a few administrative staff that have to be fed every day.

A typical breakfast will consist of bagels or muffins, cereal, fruit and possibly a hot option of either oat meal, eggs, pancakes, etc. Lunch is anything from cold cut sandwiches to brats, mac 'n cheese, or pasta. Dinner is a staple meal usually consisting of meatloaf, pot roast, hamburgers or hot dogs, pasta, and the like. Snack is usually a repeat of dinner or something similar. Snack can also be a smörgåsbord of everything from the past couple days, and the created concoctions are amazing! The staple food of drum corps is PB&J. No meal is complete with out a PB&J and it is present at every meal, either as a quick snack while in line, a hearty addition for the extra carbs, or an alternative dish. If you were to feed a drum corps pot roast for dinner, it would take on average about 100 lbs. of pot roast to make sure there was enough and maybe a tad bit extra [note these stats are from my cooking and marching experience with the Madison Scouts the last few years]. Also on average about 36 gallons of Gatorade or "drink" will be consumed during one meal as well. The amount you eat astounds you, and 4 hours later your dying of hunger, yet again.


This is just a taste of what the drum corps dining experience is like, and I have been a part of both sides. I have volunteered with the Madison Scouts in '03, '04 and '05. I marched with Impulse! in 2006 and with Madison Scouts this past summer. From being on the member side of it all I can truly say that the men and women who work the food trucks for drum corps across the nation summer after summer are amazing people doing amazing work, from all of us that have marched and enjoyed your delicious delectables, THANKS A BUNCH!