Citing weather conditions, cost of upkeep, and maintenance issues, University of Iowa Housing and Dining closed the Street Hawk Food Truck for the 2025-2026 academic year.
When the weather was warm enough during the school year, the Street Hawk would be parked in different spots across campus, making grabbing food on-the-go easier for students and staff at the university.
Parking in locations such as the Iowa Memorial Union, the courtyard of the Medical Education Research Facility, outside the Pappajohn Biomedical Discovery Building, on T. Anne Cleary Walkway, and between the UI Main Library and Adler Journalism Building.
The Street Hawk became a food vendor students regularly saw around campus, serving burgers, chicken sandwiches, wraps, and tacos.
Donald Stanwick, director of dining services at the UI, said the truck averaged roughly 113 customers ordering items per day in the 2024-2025 school year, and 140 customers in the year prior.
Ilaria Quezada, a fourth-year student at the university, regularly ate at the Street Hawk. Quezada said she enjoyed the convenience of the truck, along with the quality of the food.
“Out of the dining locations, it was usually my favorite food,” Quezada said. “Because the food is so good, it is always busy, and there is always a line. That was sometimes kind of annoying.”
Quezada said she is disappointed to hear the Street Hawk will be absent from campus for the rest of the school year. Even though there are plenty of other places to eat on campus, she said the truck was her favorite.
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The Street Hawk made its first appearance on campus in 2017 in an effort to take pressure off of the university’s Burge Dining Hall, which was feeding 3,000 people per meal at the time, Stanwick said.
With the addition of Catlett Residence Hall in 2015, the Street Hawk became less essential to general dining at the university, as it alleviated some of the traffic at Burge Dining Hall. However, the decision to close the food truck was still not easy, Stanwick said.
“We want to spend time upgrading equipment, so we made the decision this year to hold back on the Street Hawk,” Stanwick said.
Due to the truck’s size, all of the equipment needs to be custom-sized for the food truck, Stankwick said, making the cost of maintenance and service steeper.
Extreme heat makes working inside the truck difficult. Dining Services at the UI often had to close the truck due to heat or freezing temperatures, Stanwick said.
With the closure of the Street Hawk, dining services want to make sure students still have access to convenient meals.
“Since we don’t have the Street Hawk, we’ve allowed food trucks to come on campus to give students other options,” Stanwick said.
Lindsay Seifert, a first-year student at the UI, said she likes the idea of having food trucks on campus. She said she feels a food truck would provide an assortment of options for students to choose.
“It would be nice to have variety and more alternatives because it feels like the food and cafes on campus are all the same,” Seifert said.
Seifert has not purchased food from food trucks that have come to campus because she said she does not want to spend money not a part of her university meal plan.
“The main draw to having a food truck on campus would be that I can use my dining dollars with it,” Siefert said.
Dining dollars are a part of meal plans purchased through UI, and can be used at any cafe on campus. The Street Hawk previously allowed purchasing food with dining dollars because it was a university-provided food truck.
Stanwick said the future of the Street Hawk is uncertain. Dining services is looking for ways to resolve the issues they are facing and bring the Street Hawk back to campus.
“It was not an easy decision by any means,” Stanwick said. “It was one that we went back and forth on for many weeks. We feel at this time that it is probably best because we can’t guarantee the reliability of [the Street Hawk].”
Dining and Cooking