In aftermath of CRE8AD8 failure, pain for families

Let’s remember, the USDA should never have awarded a $39 million contract to CRE8AD8, a

San Antonio event planner we wouldn’t entrust with putting tchotchkes in a bag, let alone delivering food for struggling families.

While it is welcome news the USDA won’t renew its contract with CRE8AD8 — as in “Create A Date” — and its assailable owner, Gregorio Palomino, this is only a decision that prevents future harm.

It does nothing to ease the pain Palomino’s abject failure has created for families and communities across Texas and beyond.

It does nothing to explain how an event planner with no experience in food distribution, who has misrepresented himself to the public, would land such a large contract at such a critical moment.

What does harm look like? In this case, it looks like the number zero, which is exactly how many food boxes CRE8AD8 delivered to the North Texas Food Bank in Plano, and the Southeast Texas Food Bank in Beaumont, and the West Texas Food Bank in Odessa, and the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona in Tucson, and the

Utah Food Bank in Salt Lake City.

“We have received zero loads, zero boxes, zero of anything” from CRE8AD8, Libby Campbell, executive director of the West Texas Food Bank, told Express-News reporter Tom Orsborn.

Even in those instances when CRE8AD8 delivered it was inadequate. At the San Antonio Food Bank, which has been serving 120,000 people a week in this crisis, CRE8AD8 was supposed to deliver 57 truckloads of food. It delivered an estimated 22.

Likewise, it was supposed to deliver 87 truckloads to the Houston Food Bank, but it only came through with 15.

Every failure by CRE8AD8 had the potential to leave someone hungry. This was a contract for 750,000 boxes of food through the USDA’s deeply flawed $3 billion Farmers to Families Food Box Program. It should have gone to a proven supplier, and our congressional delegation needs to keep pressing on why it didn’t.

As we have learned since the contract was awarded in May, Palomino has brazenly misrepresented himself and his company, claiming associations that were not true — and were easily checked.

We learned this thanks to dogged reporting from Orsborn, who in normal times covers sports, but in this moment of crisis has chronicled food insecurity. Stories like these are why local news matters.

Bigger picture, we can’t help but wonder if the Farmers to Families Food Box Program is really the best approach to feeding the hungry. With schools and restaurants closing during this pandemic, the program purchases surplus dairy, meat and produce. These items are packaged into family-size boxes and then distributed to food banks.

While that sounds promising, it has opened the door to questionable contracts. Besides, if the primary goal is to feed the hungry and ease overburdened food banks, it would make more sense to funnel these funds to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, providing direct support to families and allowing them to shop at grocery stores rather than wait in distribution lines.

We’re relieved CRE8AD8’s contract wasn’t renewed. But if feeding families is the priority, how on earth did Palomino land this contract?

Letters may also be mailed to Letters, Express-News, P.O. Box 2171, San Antonio, TX 78297. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Length? The shorter the better – long enough to make your point. All letters are subject to editing for length and clarity.

Jerry Lara / Staff photographer CRE8AD8 owner Gregorio Palomino walks out of the San Antonio Food Bank after delivering five pallets of food boxes on May 28. By the end of June, CRE8AD8 was supposed to have delivered 57 truckloads of food to the Food Bank. It delivered less than half that. Other food banks received nothing.