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The King Island school bus will be rolling to the Tasmanian Craft this weekend.
But don’t worry it won't be bringing you to school instead it will be serving up some delicious treats as part of the fairs Gourmet Festival.
The Sailor Food Truck is the brainchild of Jo and Nelson Da Silva who have been operating the old school bus as a food van for the past six weeks.
“We are both involved in the hospitality industry and decided a few years ago that we wanted to start a food truck,” Jo said.
“One of the reasons it took us so long to do was because we didn’t just want any food truck in a box trailer, we wanted something that had character and had some of our personality coming through too.
“We were working on King Island when the school bus came up for sale, and it all just fell into place from there.”
After shipping the bus back home, Jo’s parents worked on it for six months to turn it into The Sailor Food Truck.
The idea behind the truck is to offer fresh takeaway with a mix between seafood and Portuguese dishes.
“As a family, we like to go out and eat in nice restaurants, but when it comes to wanting a fresh takeaway we found there was a big gap in the market, so that is where it stemmed from with the fresh fish and calamari,” Jo said.
“My husband Nelson is Portuguese, so the grilled meat, chipotle ribs, and Portuguese chicken is trying to include some of his heritage.”
The Tasmanian Craft Fair will be the couples first major outing with the van having garnered great local support from the community.
“We’ve had lots of support from the local community, our first month of trading far surpassed what we had expected,” Jo said.
“We trade at Westbury one night a week, and people have been coming up to us to say how great it is that the community are out using the village green and families are mingling and having fun based around food.
The Gourmet Festival will be held outside venues three, four and five and will feature some of Tasmania’s finest savory and sweet food along with wines, spirits, beers and ciders all on offer.
