San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Chef ’s claims also are dubious
Food pact partner’s résumé overstated
As more questions surface about the credentials of a San Antonio events planner who won a $39 million food relief contract from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, similar alarms are sounding about his partner in the venture, local caterer Iverson Brownell.
Brownell, who worked as a chef and caterer in Utah and South Carolina before moving to Texas, said on his website and on LinkedIn that he “initiated (the) concept” of a restaurant inside a yurt on a mountaintop in Park City, Utah; that he “co-created” a popular television show on ESPN; and that he “was chosen by the United States Olympic Committee for the USA House to be Head Chef ” at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.
Although Brownell worked on each of these projects, his description of the roles he played is exaggerated, leaders of those ventures say.
Brownell was hired as a chef in the yurt by its creators, led a segment on the ESPN show years after it was created and worked as a sous chef at the 2004 Olympics.
Brownell filed for personal
bankruptcy in 2011 in South Carolina after defaulting on more than $360,000 in debt, court records show.
Brownell, 46, responded by email to questions about his résumé by explaining his roles in the projects in more modest terms. He defended his business record and attributed his bankruptcy to “a significant downturn in the economy and our business.”
“I did nothing improper in relation to my business,” Brownell wrote, “and all transactions of the business were thoroughly disclosed and fully scrutinized as a result of the closing and bankruptcy filing of the business, the public record of which I stand by.”
Gregorio Palomino has said Brownell persuaded him to bid on the USDA contract.
Palomino’s business, CRE8AD8, was one of several companies with little to no experience in food distribution that received multimillion-dollar contracts from the USDA for its Farmers to Families Food Box program, designed to get food to desperate families during the coronavirus pandemic.
Palomino did not respond to requests for an interview.
The contract requires CRE8AD8 — pronounced “create a date” — to buy 18 million pounds of food, pack it into 750,000 individual boxes and transport the boxes to food banks and other nonprofits in seven states — all in less than six weeks.
Palomino has said Brownell will oversee “food procurement and food safety.”
The company delivered 685 boxes of fruit and vegetables last week to the San Antonio Food Bank, its first deliveries under the contract.
After winning the contract, Palomino quickly procured a Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act license from the USDA, which is required to do business in the produce industry and usually takes several weeks to obtain.
On its website, the USDA describes the license as “proof to your customers and suppliers that you are a serious business person who can be trusted to honor the terms of your contracts.”
But Palomino has claimed professional credentials he never earned. And some of Brownell’s former employers and colleagues say the caterer, while a talented chef, overstated his own accomplishments.
2004 Olympics
A LinkedIn profile for Brownell states he “initiated concept and put together” the Viking Yurt, a restaurant at the top of Park City Mountain Resort to which diners are pulled in a sleigh by snowcat.
The restaurant, praised in Vogue magazine as an “incredible yurt dinner experience,” actually was conceived in 1999 by Joy and Geir Vik, a couple who still own the business.
“He was only a chef and was hired as a chef,” Joy Vik said. “He didn’t initiate the concept. We did that entirely.”
She said she hired Brownell as the restaurant’s first chef.
“We were building it that fall when I hired him that fall,” she said. “He did go up one time and helped some hours on construction on the Viking Yurt, but that was entirely my husband. The business concept was not his at all.”
In his email, Brownell clarified that he “designed the menus and managed the start-up” of the restaurant with the Viks.
Brownell was “a good chef,” Joy Vik said, “but there were a couple of instances where it seemed quite obvious it was time for him to go.”
Brownell narrates an illustrious career for himself on a website for CanSurvive Cuisine, a partnership he formed in Charleston, S.C., and later in San Antonio with Dr. Michael Wargovich, a UT Health San Antonio professor who specializes in cancer prevention.
Wargovich didn’t respond to requests for an interview.
On the website, CanSurvive Cuisine cites H-E-B as a “client/ partner.” Brownell said he provided recipes based on food science for H-E-B newsletters in 2013 and 2014.
But Dya Campos, H-E-B’s director of government and public affairs, said the company has “never done business with this group.”
Brownell’s bio on his website reads: “While owning and operating a successful catering business in Park City, Chef Iverson also served for ten consecutive years as Head Chef for the famed Sundance Film Festival, running and overseeing the exclusive catering for a long list of celebrities and a most diverse, discerning and international range of palates.”
In an email, a Sundance official confirmed that the Sundance Institute, which runs the festival, contracted with Brownell’s catering company “for several events during Festivals,” but “he was not an employee of the Institute nor were those arrangements exclusive.”
Joe Saladyga said he was general manager of Brownell’s catering company, Iverson Catering, in Park City.
“That’s all in how you perceive it,” Saladyga said. “He was head chef of his own company, technically. And he served at Sundance. But he was not the head chef of Sundance.”
In an email, Brownell said he never had claimed to be “sole head chef for the festival.” He said he “was functioning as executive chef of my own company,” overseeing as many as 80 people at 75 events per year.
Referring to another claim on Brownell’s résumé, Saladyga said: “I know he was not the head chef at the USA House at the Olympics. That always bothered me.”
Brownell’s bio claims that “as his expertise and unique work became more recognized,” he was chosen as head chef at the 2004 Olympics, “an experience that informed much of his interest in using food specifically to enhance and maintain health.”
That’s not true, said Maxine Turner, founder of Cuisine Unlimited, a Utah catering firm. Turner was part of a coalition of caterers and chefs selected by the USOC to serve the USA House, headquarters of the U.S. delegation.
Brownell worked with the team as a “sous chef,” she said.
“He was a member of our staff, but he was not the executive chef,” Turner said. “The executive chef was an outstanding chef out of New York City, Frank Lombardi.”
In his email, Brownell clarified that he was chosen by Cuisine Unlimited “to work as a chef (one of many) to produce food” at Olympics.
Turner praised Brownell as “a creative chef” and “a good human being,” but she called his involvement in the USDA contract “concerning” due to the size of his current catering operation.
“I don’t know what they put in their bid to land a contract like that,” Turner said. “We’re bigger than he is, and we wouldn’t qualify.”
Brownell’s bio continues: “Over the next few years, food and adventure came into play again as he co-created a still popular show on ESPN, Off Shore Adventures.”
That show’s creator, Chris Fischer, disputed that in an email.
Brownell “was a chef on the (yacht) Go Fisch for a couple years and led a segment in Offshore Adventures called the Gourmet Galley,” Fischer wrote. “He was not a creator of Offshore Adventures as we had been making that show for many years prior to his involvement.”
In his email, Brownell described his role on the show in more limited terms than his online bio does. He said he “collaborated” with Fischer for several seasons.
“There were other chefs before and after me in earlier and later seasons,” he wrote.
the
Filing bankruptcy
In 2009, Brownell tried to sell Iverson Catering in Utah to Saladyga, the general manager, who declined to purchase it. Despite a steady clientele, the company was in debt, Saladyga said.
“At that point, I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to do this,’” Saladyga said. “The money wasn’t flowing. He spent more than he made, and that was an issue for me.”
Some of the company’s clients had paid Brownell thousands of dollars in deposits for future events, Saladyga said.
Among other creditors, Brownell owed $20,000 to his landlord, Paul Marsh — a debt that would surface two years later in a bankruptcy filing. Marsh said Brownell never repaid the debt.
Marsh said Brownell “left town in a hurry, still has a number of obligations, if not legal, certainly ethical.”
In his email, Brownell called
Saladyga “disgruntled.”
He added, “I resist the inference that there was anything improper about the compensation I took, or the expenses I either incurred or was reimbursed for from the business during the time I solely owned that business.”
Brownell said his work “has always been about creative collaborations with talented teams on all levels. My personal ethic is one of honesty and candor; in good times and bad.”
Brownell left Park City and returned to Charleston, S.C., where he sold his catering company for about $40,000, according to Marc Williams, who brokered the sale.
In 2011, Brownell filed for bankruptcy in South Carolina. He owed more than $360,000 to a variety of creditors, court records show, including multiple banks and American Express, to which he owed $86,500.
In January 2012, a trustee for Brownell’s estate told a court that he had not received any property or paid any money on account of the estate. The case was closed that year and the debt was canceled.
“The only debts that would have been paid were those allowed by the trustee in bankruptcy,” Brownell wrote.
Palomino’s claims
A week ago, a San Antonio Express-News investigation detailed how Palomino claimed professional credentials he didn’t earn and major corporate clients who say they have no record of doing business with him.
Since then, more evidence has emerged of unfounded claims by Palomino.
The International Live Events Association, a professional organization for the event planning industry, said it demanded recently that Palomino stop listing the credential “CSEP” — Certified Special Events Professional — after his name on his LinkedIn profile.
Jen Poyer, director of the ILEA board of governors, said the organization’s records show Palomino never has been a CSEP.
Poyer said the organization sent a cease-and-desist letter to Palomino on May 21. Palomino previously had ignored requests from the ILEA’s San Antonio chapter to stop using the designation.
The designation disappeared from Palomino’s LinkedIn profile after the Express-News began making inquiries about his credentials.
The CSEP designation was established in 1993 to recognize event professionals “who have successfully demonstrated the knowledge, skills and ability essential to perform all components of a special event,” according to the ILEA’s website. The designation is earned by passing a “rigorous exam.”
There are fewer than 500 event planners worldwide who have earned the CSEP designation, including just five locally, said Armando Seledon, incoming president of the ILEA’s San Antonio chapter.
“As someone who holds the designation to high standard and has worked tirelessly to earn it, it is highly insulting and deplorable that someone like Gregorio Palomino continues to use it,” Seledon, a destination experience manager with Visit San Antonio, the city’s marketing arm, wrote in an email.
Seledon said local event planners were shocked to learn the USDA had granted CRE8AD8 such a large contract.
“When everyone found out he was awarded that contract, we were kind of like, ‘Wow. This man?’” Seledon said.
Palomino’s LinkedIn page says he was “Chairman of the Board, YMCA of the USA.” A San Antonio YMCA spokesperson said Palomino’s claim is incorrect.
In smaller print on his LinkedIn profile is Palomino’s actual service with the local YMCA, a sevenyear stint on the board that oversees its Child & Family Services division.
Palomino’s biography on his public figure Facebook page, as of Saturday, also states he “currently sits” on the boards of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the National Hispanic Professional Organization.
A spokesman for the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce said Palominio never has been one of its board members.
Omar Guevara, president of the Rio Grande Valley chapter of the National Hispanic Professional Organization, also said there is no evidence Palomino is on the board of the National Hispanic Professional Organization.
“We are not aware of him at all, and San Antonio hasn’t had a chapter in, I would say, eight or 10 years,” Guevara said.
Palomino also says on his Facebook page he is a “Big Brother in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.” But Jessica Gonzalez, executive assistant to the president and CEO of San Antonio-based Big Brothers and Big Sisters of South Texas, said Palomino doesn’t appear in the nonprofit’s records.
Gonzalez said she does not know if Palomino has volunteered in another city. The national headquarters for Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America does not have a database of members.
The organization said volunteers must live within an hour of a city that has a Big Brothers and Big Sisters chapter in order to serve as a volunteer. Palomino has lived in San Antonio since at least 2004.