Food truck festival benefits Lower Burrell Volunteer Fire Company

It was good eats for a good cause Saturday afternoon in Lower Burrell.

A food truck festival attracted a sun-baked crowd with a variety of delicacies, capable of satisfying anyone’s tastes, and a percentage of the sales benefited Lower Burrell Fire Company No. 3.

The weather might have been a little hot, but no hotter than a hot Del Vecchios signature sausage. The Vandergrift eatery was just one of the 17 local vendors represented by a food truck at the festival.

“We make our own sausage, and I created a hot sausage with diced-up, pickled jalapenos in it,” owner Tommy Scanga said. “Everything comes with grilled peppers and onions on it. We do our own pulled pork. We do our own pulled chicken. And we do loaded fries with pulled pork and chicken.”

Fred Hereda, 40, of New Kensington, was one of the customers digging into a Del Vecchios pulled pork and cheese with french fries mixed with chicken and barbecue sauce.

“You gotta go big,” Hereda said. “It tastes amazing with homemade barbecue sauce.”

Filling a large open parking lot, there were food trucks with cheesesteaks, gyros, hamburgers, pierogies, ravioli, Italian beef sandwiches, hoagies, wood-fired pizza, Chinese food, corn dogs, and the obligatory funnel cakes and deep fried Oreos to name a few.

“Number one, we wanted an opportunity to showcase our fire department, and we wanted to give some local businesses an opportunity to support their products,” said Brennan Sites, assistant chief of Lower Burrell No. 3.

This is the third year the fire department has hosted this particular one-day event, and it expects to pull in between $5,000 and $10,000 to help pay for building renovations.

“We thought why don’t we try a fundraiser where we have the public come through our doors, see where their tax dollars go, see where their donations go and support local business,” Sites said.

But the event is more than just a fundraiser, according to Brandy Grieff, a food truck committee volunteer.

“It’s a very special event for the fire department,” Grieff said. “It brings them together with the community. Instead of meeting them on their worst day, they meet them on a fantastic day.”