State Street Market, an upscale food hall in Downtown Los Altos, is launching a new “after school special” menu catered toward students.

The menu consists of pizza, sliders and drinks ranging from $5–$10, and is available from 3 to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Friday. It is a permanent feature of the food hall, although items on the menu are subject to change.

“I think in order to have a real community hub, we need to make sure that the food hall is affordable for anyone who goes there, especially students,” said Robert Hindman of Los Altos Community Investments, who launched the food hall project five years ago and oversees its ongoing development.

While Hindman observed many students hanging out in Downtown Los Altos, and highlighted its close proximity to local high schools, he said he saw a lack of places for them to sit down and do homework (or even make TikTok videos, he thoughtfully noted).

“We’d like to create an atmosphere where students could feel welcomed, and also have an affordable after school lunch or meal,” he said.

According to Hindman, the food hall was created with the goal of facilitating a sense of community in mind and he hopes the new after school menu will play to that goal.

“We wanted the food hall to be a community hub,” Hindman said, “People connect over food and drinks, right? And especially coming out of the pandemic, that’s really important.” 

The food hall itself opened in early September and Hindman describes it as “still in opening stages,” with six of the 12 “concepts” (restaurants) currently open. 

According to Hindman, Los Altos Community Investments and the team behind the food hall have additional plans to implement programs in 2022, like cooking classes to be hosted in the hall’s “teaching kitchen” beginning early next year.

“This program, I think, will be one of many to roll out and they’ll all continue to evolve depending on the appeal of the programs and the feedback that we receive from customers,” Hindman said.