Highland Park resident Robin Bagwell decided to celebrate her 50th birthday in the most magnanimous way she knew how: She rented out a food truck to feed an entire community.
Ruthie’s Rolling Café parked in front of the Diabetes Health and Wellness Institute at the Juanita J. Craft Center this morning and treated those in the area to free bacon and sausage breakfast sandwiches. Bagwell rented out the food truck, owned by one of her friends, and rang in her milestone birthday in an unusual manner.
“My friends don’t want to go eat another birthday meal so I figured I would do something different,” Bagwell said.
Community members, DHWI patients and staff, and a handful of Bagwell’s friends turned up to the event to celebrate the birthday and score free breakfast.
Robin Skinner, Bagwell’s friend, does marketing for Ruthie’s and helped arrange the logistics of the event. Birthdays are a common affair for Ruthie’s, but this booking was unique.
“If anyone else had called me it would have been a shock, but it doesn’t surprise me at all with Robin,” Skinner said.
All Bagwell had to do was pick a location.
Bagwell’s husband, Norm, works with Frazier Revitalization Inc., an organization working to rebuild the neighborhood, and thought the DHWI would be the perfect place to set up camp. The plan behind this “meals and wheels on steroids,” as he called it, went beyond breakfast.
“The idea is to bring visibility to the neighborhood,” Norm said. “We are trying to rebuild Dallas one piece at a time.”
If breakfast sandwiches can help rebuild Dallas, this event was a success. Community members stopped by to grab a sandwich, and the birthday girl seemed right at home yelling “Free Breakfast!” to those passing by.
D Magazine intern Caitlin Adams graduated as valedictorian from The University of Mississippi’s Meek School of Journalism and New Media in May 2012. She is a recent Dallas transplant and likes to spend her weekends brunching, frequenting flea markets, and playing outside with her brother’s puppy.
