Tom’s Table, a cart carrying leftovers from the day’s lunch, is now available to students.

The cart will be put by the front offices for extra food after school. The cart will contain food including sandwiches and pizza

“As students leave for the day they can grab a sandwich or if they’re staying for athletics or any activities, they can grab a sandwich and stay around,” Hayes High School principal Ric Stranges said.

Janitors have had enough of throwing out bags of uneaten food and took the issue up with Stranges. 

“I called our director of food service and our cafeteria folks and I said ‘is there anything we can do?’” Stranges said. “and they said ‘yeah we’re going to get a cart that you can ice down because sometimes we have 30 [sandwiches], and you can bring it up front and just say it’s free.’”

The idea was thought of by Tom Sampson, who has been a janitor at hayes for 3 years. To honor him for his idea, Stranges proposed that the cart would be called “Tom’s Table”.

“When I was growing up, I was raised in the projects in south Florida, I never have gone hungry, but man, have I ever gone to be really dizzy from not having a full stomach.” Sampson said.

Based on his past experiences, Sampson found it hard to have to throw this leftover food away. He noticed that a lot of students would not have the opportunity to eat another meal after lunch.

“‘All this food is being wasted, why don’t we give it to somebody?’” Sampson said.

Besides the helpful aspects of Tom’s Table, there are some setbacks by rules and regulations.

“I think it’s a great idea, but there are a lot of rules and limits we have to do because you have to make sure things aren’t expired, so there’s a lot of regulations,” Hayes lunch lady Sally Rajke said.