- [Reporter] Anxiety
mounts over the spread- - Number of people-
- [Reporter] Of COVID-19. - [Reporter] Mysterious,
highly communicable- - Contracted the coronavirus-
- Lethal disease- - Continues to grow-
- Spreading rapidly around- - 1,600 Americans-
- The world- - An hour infected.
- Virus with no human natural immunity. - [Reporter] New hotspots
erupting across the country. - [Reporter] The coronavirus
has overtaken the 2003- - [Tucker] People you know-
- [Reporter] SARS epidemic. - Will get
sick. Some may die. This is real. - We must focus on
containment while doing- - More than 1/4 million-
- Everything we can- - Coronavirus cases recorded in the US. - [Dr. Tedros] To prepare for a potential- - Virus is a major event.
- [Dr. Tedros] Pandemic. - It will affect your life, and
by the way, it's definitely- - Now there are fears-
- [Tucker] Not just the flu. - That the coronavirus outbreak
could become a pandemic. - Today, the World Health
Organization officially announced that this i
s a global pandemic. - We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be
characterized as a pandemic. - More than 1/4 of Americans are now being ordered to stay home. - Major cities across the country are looking more like ghost towns. - They're all now closed. It's all an attempt to slow
the spread of coronavirus. - The markets today plummeted,
the DOW plunging almost 10%, suffering its worse loss since 1987. - Is this the new normal
until height of the summer? - We'll see what happens
,
but they think August, could be July, could be longer than that. - What is going to stop this now? - Well, I'm not sure it can be stopped just because we now have so many companies that I think are going to be strapped. - In New York, all bars, all nightclubs, all restaurants, all movie theaters, every venue, pretty
much, is to be shut down. - [Reporter] Illinois
and Ohio closing all bars and restaurants, California
shutting down bars and wineries. - We don't know is what
the reality will be i
n two months' or in six months' time. - [Reporter] Every major sports league in the country is calling a timeout. - It's the first federally
mandated quarantine in over 50 years. - About 80% of hotel rooms
in the US are now empty, the worst crisis the hotel
industry has ever experienced. - Hotels are directly
linked with restaurants, with sporting events, and all
of these things have dwindled down to just about zero at this point. - [Reporter] Ohio shutting
down public schools for three weeks, M
aryland
schools closed for two, also, New Mexico, Michigan,
and Oregon schools. - [Reporter] The reality of
prolonged school shutdowns as a precautionary measure
could be crippling. 22 million students rely on free or reduced-price school lunches. For many, it's their
only hot meal of the day. - In the USA, another 2.4
million people have filed for unemployment benefits
in the past week. More than 38 million people
have now lost their jobs in the United States since
the pandemic hit in March. An
d these are the worst
layoffs the country has seen since the Great Depression
of the early 1930s. I'm starving...
I haven't ate in two days.. Usually we have kitchens that we can go to,
but you can't go to them no more. - [Reporter] America is the
wealthiest nation on Earth, and yet scenes like this one are becoming increasingly common, lines of cars packed with
families desperate for food. - Right now, the need has
increased by 200 to 400% - [Reporter] Across the
US, the COVID-19 crisis is also
a hunger crisis. Food banks are overwhelmed
with new clients. - [Reporter] The USDA says that today, more than 37 million
Americans are food insecure defined as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an
active, healthy life. - [Reporter] As millions of
Americans lose their jobs and wait in line at food banks, farmers are destroying their crops. - [Reporter] What's going on with farmers? - COVID-19 is disrupting
the farming industry on many levels. - [Reporter] From onions in Oregon to g
reen beans tilled under
in the fields of Florida to milk dumped in Wisconsin. - The dairy industry right
now is having a terrible time. - The fear of the unknown
has crashed the price by almost a third of where it was at. - [Reporter] Supply chain disruptions due to the outbreak are preventing farmers from getting their
products to the markets. - Is very difficult, not
just for me, you know, on the economic side, but
emotional side as well. - Our farming operations
are not gonna change. The pand
emic is not having
any effect on our timing, on what we do when we do crops. It takes six months to get
a crop planted to harvest. Cattle take years to
produce to a certain size. So you have to keep production in place so that we've got the food to eat. - [Reporters] So long as farmers assume that the food service
industry will open up over the next few months, it just doesn't make sense for them to completely alter
their growing patterns. Many are hoping that
government interventions and aid pa
ckages will help to carry them through this rough patch. - USDA is announcing the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program. This is the Farmers to
Family Food Box Program. This is a $3 billion program. We'll be purchasing $3
billion in fresh produce, dairy, and meat products to be distributed to Americans in need through
our food bank networks as well as other community
and faith-based organizations. But this is what America does best. It's Americans helping Americans. - The idea is threefold, to hel
p farmers, to have local workers on
the job to pack these boxes, and to help families who
simply need that food. (poignant music) - This is definitely the coolest project I've ever worked on. Definitely the most important in my life and the most grateful for
the opportunity to give back. So I appreciate that very much. Iverson Brownell, partner
in the project CRE8AMEAL and director of procurement. I got introduced for this project. Actually, an RFP came to
me, and I read through it. And I knew G
reg for some time and knew that he worked
on government contracts. So I one day drove over to his house, showed him the RFP, and put
a box of food on his desk and said, "We should go after it." (tense music) - I was gonna say, it's your fault. It's your fault that we're in this mess. - I know. I got this little RFP- - (laughing) This little RFP. - That said we had a
potential to make a few boxes, as we can see.
(Greg laughing) - Gregorio Palomino, I
am the CEO of CRE8AD8 and our operation CRE8AM
EAL for the USDA Farmers to
Families Food Box Program. Iverson approached me,
and he's been wanting to go after some government
contracts for a while. I explained to him that they're
not always easy to go after. And of course, there's challenges when you go after a government contract. - I knew that it was
something that was needed. I mean, what brought me to San Antonio was helping people out more
so on the cancer research and recipe side. - [Dr. Wargovich] The
CanSurvive Cuisine concept combin
es the talents of a
skilled chef, Iverson Brownell, with a medical researcher,
myself, Dr. Mike Wargovich, to bring to you recipes, information, and the latest on incorporating
anti-inflammatory components into your everyday living. - I wanted to help people out. You know, is it a piece of business? Yes. But at the end of the day, we saw the need and a need
that could be executed by us. - We decided to go after this opportunity, and we knew that it was
not our core business. But Iverson had alre
ady
been doing food boxes for a while before that
to help the community out. - We started the food box
program with our business Fork and Garden prior to this project and making our boxes, the Food
to You boxes, we called them, which were delivered or picked up out of our local commissary here. - Local catering business Fork
and Garden is finding ways to serve people during this pandemic. Today, they launched their
new service Food to You, offering ready-to-prepare meals in a box. - We saw a lar
ger scope
and scale and ability to be able to help people out. We wanted to help support
and reach out to people in the community that needed it. I've done a lot in my career. - With more on Fork and Garden, chefs Iverson Brownell and Dave Terrazas join us this morning, and
we thank you, gentlemen, for being here on the show. - Good morning. Thank you so much. - And with my background,
I'm having businesses in Charleston, South
Carolina, Park City, Utah, I've just really enjoyed events, catering
, execution of events, all
scopes and scales of events as well as helping people
out in the community. - The deadline, I believe, was May 1st. And for that week, Iverson
and I talked, you know, like little kids, (laughing) you know, just about every couple hours. "How you doing? How you doing, man?" We were just all excited. And then I think the
next day we were like, "Well, what if we get 5,000 boxes? That would be really cool
if we could help feed people with 5,000 boxes." - Prior to this RFP,
Greg and I knew that we would need a extremely solid team, which we had in place working
on different components prior to the bid, but we really pulled some of the team that I had prior to this because
I saw all of their talents and expertise and drive
to help people out. - The good thing is most
of the team we already had, we already had the resources for. We just had to pool them and
assign them to this project. - And the team that we had, or teams that we have, I should say, there were diffe
rent departments set up prior to getting the bid, warehouse, warehouse management. - I'm Steve Wire. Here at CRE8AMEAL, I play the role of the warehouse lead supervisor. - I'm Timothy Pena. I was mainly a forklift operator
and a pallet jack operator. - Logistics. - My name's Lauren Lear, and I am the project manager
for the CRE8AMEAL project. - My name is Kelly De La Torre, and I am the non-profit relations here at CRE8AD8 for CRE8AMEAL project. - Transportation. - My name's Valentin De La Torre
. I am part of the CRE8AMEAL
team doing logistics, a liaison between transportation
and back of the house and procurement of some items that help go through production. - Human resources, accounting. - My name is Sandy Hernandez. I was brought in to oversee
the human resources aspect of the project, as well as
some of the financial aspects of, submitting BOLs to the
USDA portal for reimbursement of the different products
that we were delivering and doing some accounts
receivable and payables. -
And quality control. - I am Lupe Palomino, and
I have the distinction of having been called
the director of logistics and supply chain for CRE8AMEAL. - That last few days of April,
I submitted the proposal. I wrote it up, obviously ran
it by some friends of mine, business advisors. - Marty Bartlett, I'm vice president of a company called
Liquid Capital Southwest. Liquid Capital is a factoring
and finance company. We provide loans and lines of credit to businesses all over the country. In many ca
ses, it's
government contractors. That's one of our specialties. We provide the funding so that businesses can
get their work done. - We had to make sure everything
was factual, truthful, and we could execute anything
that we put on paper. That's the most important part about putting in a proposal like that. - We looked into this contract really well and did a lot of due diligence because they needed a lot of money. It was a fairly large contract. And after doing a lot of
due diligence on Greg,
his other business partner,
and the business in general, we determined that it was worthy
of loaning them $10 million that they could supply to
their vendors for trade credit. That funding was important for them because it allowed them to go out to their various food vendors and show that they weren't
just some small business. They weren't just some
fly-by-night company. They had the backing of
$10 million behind them. And that's not something we took lightly. We would not hand out $10
million o
f our own money and pledge that if it wasn't a company and a couple of individuals
that we knew we could trust. - We had no idea what
the USDA would award us. We had no idea how much
they would give us. We only told them that we could
complete a certain amount. One day in our pipe dreams, we said, "Wouldn't it be
amazing if we got 50,000 boxes?" We just thought that would be phenomenal. I mean, we did the math
on that, and we're like, "Ah, this would support our business and maybe even help brin
g on
new jobs for our companies." - I knew how massive the
project was gonna be, and I knew how fast it
was gonna have to operate, especially with the first
phase that we were awarded. I knew that we had to
get planning quickly, and we had to get
operations planned quickly, and we had to get moving quickly. Being in the restaurant industry, you feed people all the time. And so to be able to do this
on a more impactful level for families that are facing hunger, are facing economic challenges
with
the COVID pandemic, and being able to provide them something that was gonna help
sustain their household was something that was
really important to me. - May 8th was a Friday morning. I opened up my email, and
there it was, the award letter And he called. And before I answered the
phone, I knew that we got it. I didn't know what scale
and what scope it would be, but I knew that we got it, and
I knew that we could do it. - That moment changed my life. That moment changed Iverson's life. And we k
new that moment
was gonna change many, many people's lives. - The only concern was the short amount of time to pull it off. We had up to 750,000 boxes to do. - We really thought that
we would push out 50 or 100,000 boxes. We had some doubts. I know we did. - During this project, it
all happened so quickly. We had the opportunity to
provide up to 18 million pounds of food, 18 million pounds of food over about 40 days throughout the Southwest
region of the country. - The fact that we had 10 days
i
n May and 30 days in June, a total of 40 days to
get this project done, it just squeezed us tighter and tighter. - The team, the large team that we had, they knew that the contract
went in or the proposal went in, the RFP, which is a request
for proposal to the USDA. And we got it. Everybody
showed up at work the next day. I told them we got the contract. Everybody was excited, you know, eager and really excited
to see what we could do. - [Gregorio] So over the
next couple of weeks, we started g
etting together at Los Patios here in San Antonio, where
Iverson's primary office is at. - Out office, we got a great office. Great owners own the property,
and we've had the opportunity to have a great kitchen
commissary for some time, and we office out of there. So fortunately, we're able
to pull the team together and really start to build
the internal structure of the project before we found
the warehouse that we needed. And the scope of the project
has changed a little bit. And that is one r
eason why we had to wait for the perfect space
to pull the trigger on so we could start production. - Working at Los Patios
as our satellite office for the first few weeks
was a crucial moment in the bonding experience of
that primary management team. It was the first folks in
the door on this project. - Right now, what we're doing is procuring all of our necessities for the warehouse, just getting everything put in place, get everything in a timely manner, so everything's up to code. - Mel gets
this done. - These boxes are done. - Sysco done. Sysco. (sighs) - A lot of the pre-logistics
were based out of Los Patios, setting up all the departments
and staffing the departments. - We were able to really
get to know one another and how each other operated. And really, as we were developing all of our operating procedures, and this is mostly administrative
development at this stage, and we were able to identify the strengths and weaknesses within each other so that we were building
a very s
trong structure of the management team from the get-go, before we ever got to the warehouse. - Lauren drew out our whole day warehouse. And so every day, we add whenever
we get another product in, so we're figuring out conveyor lengths, just trying to make sure all
of our purchasing is in line with what we're trying to get done or what we are getting done. - Me, Kelly, and Lauren, we've been working hand-in-hand
from the beginning, from whiteboards to making
those whiteboards, SOPs. They've real
ly, really
stepped it up to find a home for all these trucks. The SOP was Sam, Iverson, Chris Cook, find the produce, procure it. - 85, 90,000 gallons a week
for the two weeks to follow up. So those are the kind of
numbers we're looking at. - [Employee] Okay. - They let us know how many
trucks they're able to produce. That's handed off to Lauren. Lauren creates the BOLs. - After the BOL is locked
and y'all send it back to, sending it to the shipper, we have that printed one. (clapping) And I'm (
going) keep a file on them all. And I'll be able to pull
every single day of delivery. - [Kelly] Oh, and if they
call you, you're like, "Hey." - Lauren gets it to Kelly and
Bill, and they find a home calling hundreds and hundreds of people, trying to find a home for the produce, the milk, and the protein. - USDA Farmers to Food Box Grant- And I have some trucks, and I would like to put your name on them. If you could just give me a call back, maybe just asking you guys
for some food this month,
that would be fantastic. My number is 9- - And then from there, turn it off to me to create a tracking sheet of where these trucks are going. Once we get these, we'll be good to go. - Making a timeline of events
and just supporting them and finding and tracking the trucks to find their home. So it's been a hand-in-hand
pass off, like a relay. - All of these departments were set, and the basis was drawn up at Los Patios, so once we had the warehouse,
that it's an easy transition. - These were all
networked individuals, whether they stemmed from Greg, whether they stemmed from Iverson, whether they stemmed
from other individuals that came from that core team. - Kelly and Val and Lauren
and Sandy and everybody else, this is all that week
of roughly, you know, May 20th or so, a few days beforehand. This is last week and a half of May. And it went from a quiet
facility on the north side to a bustling team of people. - Just, I'm really fortunate to have organically come
together with the tea
m that did. - It's really interesting
to hear feedback from people who have been in the industry for so long, doing things that they're
so passionate about. And the team that we have here, I mean, I can't tell you one person
that didn't give more than 100% on this project. Every single person that
I came in contact with and worked with has been
giving it their all. - When we won the award and we were given this
opportunity to feed people, it was... a very big responsibility. It was going to be a
challenge. We knew it was. - No one said, "Forget it.
We're not doing this anymore. I'm tired. I'm frustrated." Nobody gave up. People were working, gosh,
I mean 20-plus hours a day, just trying to really make
this happen for people. - And so as soon as we got
that letter on May 8th, the race was on. On May 12th, we had an
interview or a webinar, rather, with the USDA, essentially
congratulating everybody on the webinar and telling
us the rules of the game, what needed to happen. And then the i
nfamous PACA
license came into play on May 12th. - [Narrator] As anyone knows
in the produce supply chain, especially dealers, from
time to time, disputes arise. That's where the Perishable
Agricultural Commodities Act comes in. Much like you need a driver's
license to operate a vehicle, a PACA license is proof to
your customers and suppliers that you understand and abide by the rules of the produce industry. - By that time, there was
about 10 or 15 of us in a room. And we all looked at each
oth
er like, this is new. The PACA license was not
part of the proposal process. But what our team didn't
know at that moment was that on Mother's Day
evening, Farmer Mike had said, "You should probably get a
PACA license just in case, just so that way, people take you a little bit more seriously because we're so used to buying food through some of the other
suppliers and providers directly, or indirectly, rather, and not necessarily
straight from the farmers "and the growers and the shippers." So w
e went ahead and did that. And we were lucky we did,
because a few days later, on that webinar, it
was made a requirement. That was essentially the first time that the media had something
that they knew we didn't have. The downside is they didn't
realize it wasn't even required until May 12th, not at the time of award. So after a couple weeks,
going back and forth, answering questions, we were
granted our PACA license. - We didn't have one prior
to getting the contract. So we applied for it, and
we got it so we can start producing
for the contract. - And today's the 22nd, and
it's been a crazy whirlwind. So today's meeting was
a very important meeting this morning, mainly for the fact that, as of last night, we
received our PACA license. The PACA license is essentially
the license in the industry that shows these suppliers and growers that we are just as serious as they are, and we're willing to play by their rules. The first thing Iverson and I did was, we started making the phone
cal
ls to secure the items, the food, the partnerships
that we needed to do. - My name is Steven Paprocki, managing partner at THE CO-OP SA, owner of Texas Black Gold
Garlic, Pharma from the Farm, and president of the Chef Cooperatives here in San Antonio, Texas. Chef Cooperatives is a
501(c)(3) we started in 2013. Iverson's a partner in
the Chef Cooperatives here in San Antonio, Texas. The Chef Cooperative has a
closed chat group on Facebook. We have, I wanna say, like,
close to 60 to 70 members th
at are on that chat group. So we have a great network
of people that can reach out and try to advocate for
needs for restaurants or different groups or
things that are of value or people are passionate about
to helping the community. - Well, once we got the contract, I mean, my main task outside of finishing
the project, in my mind, was finding 18 million pounds
of food in about 45 days. At the beginning of the pandemic
everyone around here suffered, all of the business
stopped all of a sudden..
. but shortly after, CRE8AD8
called us and contacted us, an they offered us enough work to
put new life into our business. - We got involved in the CRE8AMEAL program through our neighbor Avila Produce. He invited us to participate, and it turned out to be a
really good deal for us. - You know, COVID had just struck. And you know, we were getting
ready to come to a time where business was really gonna slow down. And when the CRE8AMEAL
project came on, you know, that gave us a big boost
to keep pe
ople employed. - We just got a phone
call out of the dark, asking if we were interested. And you would almost have to be crazy not to hear somebody out, especially in the middle of a pandemic. - Early on, we had read a lot of the press that was written about several companies regarding the awardees of this contract. We were not afforded the
opportunity to get this contract. And we felt very strong that
if it was meant for anybody, it was meant for people like
us in the food service industry who
had grower partners
that were affected by this. And you know, we were extremely
affected by the pandemic. But you know, when I spoke
with the CRE8AD8 team, I felt very comfortable working with them. And they reminded me, "Hey,
this is about feeding families, not about our egos." And that really resonated with me. - My goal in the
beginning was to work with as many local purveyors,
farms, dairy farmers, (soft music) meat farmers, and produce
farmers for this project. But you know, from the media
and how the award was accepted, (sniffles) it was actually, we were kind of shunned by some locals. - Some of the people
that stayed away from it, it was because, I wanna say, greed. I mean, they wanted the contract. Somebody else got it. So instead of actually
trying to help, support, and actually make a little
money, they stayed away from it. That's my feeling towards it. - A few days into us getting the contract, word had already started
trickling out that we had won, a small business in San
Antonio had won. I thought it was a great idea
for us to be ahead of that and send out a press release, so that way, people knew it was coming from us instead of speculating however else they were thinking at the time. We had no idea the challenges that were gonna come out of it. We had no idea of the media,
the politics involved. We didn't. That's not why
we went after the bid. We went after it to help people. We put together at that
time a very simple, nicely written press release. What came a
fter that in the
days following was pandemonium. (soft music) (bells chiming) - Now at 10, a contract controversy. A San Antonio event planning
company was awarded $39 million from the federal government
to distribute food to families in need during this pandemic. But one local leader says
the company has no experience and hasn't given out a
single box of food so far. - The program officially
kicked off on May 15th. And on May 20th, we had
an webinar on invoicing. And the USDA was very
specific
on the May 12th call. And they said, "You should wait to invoice and do anything until May 20th, until we have our invoice
webinar on how to invoice." So that was our next marker. We could start preparing.
We could start doing things. But they made it very
clear not to invoice. So of course, we don't wanna
start sending out food. We don't wanna start sending out things until we know exactly how to invoice. - We wanted to make sure that
we had an accounting system to ensure that we were monitorin
g
invoices from our vendors, making sure they were being paid on time. - If we had started doing things or started to do things,
and we didn't realize that we were doing things the right way, it could've potentially put
our businesses in jeopardy. And it would've jeopardized
the future of the food that we would've been able to provide for families around the United States. So we wanted to play it smart. Well, that was something
else the media jumped on. - One of the things that
really caught my
reaction was Politico, I believe
it was, among others, may have been out there that
were putting negative press on CRE8AMEAL. - It's May 15th. They haven't started
shipping out any boxes. - There were doubts from the start about CRE8AD8's ability to purchase and distribute food boxes to food banks throughout the Southwest. - You know, sitting there, seeing that, and I'm just thinking, behind the scenes, I know what they're going through. But it was a great program, and to know that we got
to hel
p be a part of that with the CRE8AMEAL project,
it is a true blessing. - Well, we didn't start on the
specific day of the program, but one reason on the procurement side is we had to find these
great relationships. And these great relationships, we had to- - We had to trust them.
- Well, had to trust them, but number two, bring
their people back to work, restart their factories. So that's nothing that can
happen overnight, you know? That's something that, it takes time. - I underestimated the im
pact
that this has had on people. Here in our company, we had to furlough 70% of our
staff because the pandemic. And to see the smiling faces
of people coming back to work because of this opportunity
that we were granted by CRE8AD8 just warmed my heart. And knowing how much good we were doing was very, very appealing to me. - As soon as, you know,
we were told about it, they needed some time to get licensed and all the things that go along with it. You know, so for us, you
know, we needed to pla
ce some, you know, orders, and not
everyone's sitting on, you know, massive tonnage of product. So everything needed to take a week to kinda coordinate and organize. Everything right now that we're
making today is strictly for you. That's so cool to hear! And you'll see the volume that's there. So here's all the ground chicken, so if you look
how much we are getting ready to make today. So, you're doing everything here? You're doing
the cooking, as well as the flash freezing... Everything! So th
is is just all the prep
for the chili is just in there.. So that's all of these are, chicken chili is everything that you see, so all this! - We had to put all this help and support into turning these businesses back on. They were off because of the pandemic. Even hearing it from you, from a successful person who's been in this industry
for many years, and still having challenges... It was hard... yeah, and the staffing was the
hardest part, and figuring out how to do it. - I don't care what siz
e business you are. If you're closed, you're
not doing anything and somebody places a large order with you You need time to do it,
to do it right, healthy, and by the rules. A lot of people in general didn't understand when you're
a small business, ad you go to a bigger business overnight it takes time... you know... it's tough, you gotta get
the staff in, it takes time, you have to realign things. The media... they criticized it, like how could
you not get this out in 40 days or 45 days. Like r
ight now, they're
doing this just for you. There was like 60 or 70 people here and
then we had some lines going on that side. The line started there
and went all the way down. - One of the reasons
why we got this project was not just to feed people, but it was to stimulate the
economy and help farmers. That was the point of this
program, is to help farmers get food to people with food insecurities. - You know, to talk about the hard months, I will tell you that the
CRE8AMEAL program, company, en
tity (soft music) has helped us at Mill-King because there were some
hard months, financially, and we have been shifting
our business over to actually be able to hit
a different market segment and to supply more products
to fewer customers. - The impact that this has had, or I should say that the
help it has given us, is it's helped our growers
be able to sell products that they would have to till. It's helped us bring back employees, and it's helped us stay financially viable until the pandemic
is over. - In fact, as of tomorrow, we are opening up on
several new product lines that CRE8AMEAL helped us
get to that next step on. It gave us an extra month
of producing a product, which is invaluable. - We wanted to spread the wealth. Our goal was never to
just keep every dollar. Iverson and I knew that there was a reason why they selected us. And talking back and forth with the USDA, they made it very clear that
our proposal, our model, our mission and the way that we described how we were
gonna help
people was what they wanted. That is what they were looking for. They wanted people to
spread the business out amongst other small businesses. They loved the proposal we submitted and how they knew we were going
to include other companies and not just try to do it all ourselves. - Due to the magnitude
of the project, you know, and what USDA was needing, you know, to support all these families, you know, from my perspective, I
don't see how, you know, you can't get the small guys toge
ther. And me, personally, in my
business, being a small business, you know, the network of what you can do when you work together
with smaller outfits is you can put things together faster. You know, we have to
change our production lines a lot of times. We're more adapt to change. You know, in larger companies,
they have a line set, and that's the way they do it. - So we worked with a lot
of great small businesses, some local here in San Antonio. I wish we could've worked with more. We had to o
utreach and do some
support outside of the city and outside of the state, which really was a changing factor. And a lot of these
businesses that were just, they needed that support. Of course, everything came
quick for every awardee, 150 plus in the country. So we were trying to figure out ways to support different businesses, one of which was Labatt Foods that I've ordered from many,
many times in the past. And I reached out to them, wanting to help support their staff, possibly utilizing their
warehouse and ordering tremendous
amounts of food from them because they were in a hard
time like everybody else. And they said, because of the media, they wouldn't touch this
with a 10-foot pole. - Going to produce row down
in downtown San Antonio, meeting with co-packers that we believed were really gonna be an asset
and keep the jobs going down on produce row, little
animosity through there. That was when I started to
learn that not everyone's in it for the right reasons. And that started to
really
show me how business can be. - The saddest part of
this whole program is, is that it was supposed to help people. Instead of people and
companies wanting to help, they kinda wouldn't touch it,
like how it was addressed. It was like they were scared to just because of the bad
press associated with it. The thing is, people still needed to eat. They still needed help. So you're gonna take your company and not try to help people in need because you don't want
your name hurt in press or you d
on't want your
name attached to something? That, to me, is ridiculous. The whole point is coming together in a time of crisis to help people. That's what our heart,
as humans, we should do regardless of the situation. So to me, it's ridiculous
that these other companies didn't wanna step up to the
table and try to help out. - So from the excitement to the downfall of people just not
wanting to work with you because of certain beliefs that they have and certain beliefs in us
was a real saddening
point. - It seems it was just a snowball effect with the local media, because
once they started seeing that we weren't producing in the timeline that was demanded of us, that
was all the news coverage that they needed to keep going on, because I mean, frankly, (laughing) a sports news editor doesn't really have any sports to (laughing) report on anymore, so he's creating his own sports. - The small local paper
here in San Antonio, the "Express-News," a
sports writer, of all guys, who thought he
could
write about this project, this contract. - Yeah, the "SA Express-News," boy, they've had a good time with this. And I mean, they're doing their job, but they have a lot of misinformation. - There was a lot of scrutiny
that came onto our team because we were from
the restaurant industry, not the distribution industry. - I came across that RFP, and I posted it on Chef
Cooperative group chat. Two people showed interest. One was Iverson, of course, and
then Jamie Gonzalez-Stevens. They both ha
d a program where
they were doing food boxes at Fork and Garden, so I
thought they were working on that project together. So I shared the information
via email to both of them that next day, when they asked. When Iverson won the
contract is when I found out. I posted a celebratory
congratulations on that closed chat. And that's when I found
out that Jamie and Iverson didn't work on that contract together. She was a little bit disheartened about them winning the contract
and her not getting it, s
o much so that we had to remove
her from that closed chat. - And there was a lot of chastising. There was a lot of negative media reports that came from this. - You know, at first, I think
his intentions were decent. He wanted to try to
focus on a small business winning an award in San Antonio and how that was gonna be impactful. Then he started trying to discredit myself time and time again, and that delayed the process even further. It forced us to withdraw our progress, because in the beginni
ng,
we were very transparent with what we were doing. And the information that we
provided in the beginning, every single bit of it was turned on us. - Tom made a lot of
inaccurate accusations, these "dubious claims" as he calls them. - [Reporter] One
"Express-News" report uncovered what it called, quote, "dubious
claims" made by the owner. - The first one I think
he said was something about me not being on the
board at the Hispanic Chamber. That was false. There were a few positions
available o
n the board of the Hispanic Chamber,
and the leadership at the board agreed to put myself and I believe one or two
other very active members of the community on the board. And I still have many, many
friends at the Hispanic Chamber that asked me, "Why would they
say you weren't on the board? Why would they say that you didn't serve? Why would they say this?" - My name is Danny Saenz. And I met Greg back in
2007, and we actually met through the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He was a member, and I
joined soon after that. And we were both involved
with the chamber a great deal. We both joined their
organization called Embajadores, which means ambassador in English. - I was in Embajador of the Year. - One year, he was chosen
as Embajador of the Year. - I believe around 2009. - And another year, soon after that, I was Embajador of the Year. - And immediately after that, we were asked to join the board. So of course, we gladly accepted. - I guess the chamber appreciated
the work we were doin
g because we were both appointed
to the board of directors. I believe that was 2010, but
I may be a year off on that. - It wasn't very long-lived 'cause I believe it was
just a vacancy at that time. So I wanna say we were
there maybe for a year, maybe a year and a half
at the most on the board. So it wasn't a full term, I think, of like three years at that
time, but I was on the board. - I can't really speak to why
the chamber did not verify that he was on the board,
but I can assure you he was.
- What the Hispanic Chamber
did, though, unfortunately, is they never recorded us on the board. From my understanding,
over the last few weeks, they never recorded that myself as well as these one or other two members that were asked to be on the board were actually ever recorded. - I did talk to one of the
members there on the staff about that, and he told me
they couldn't find any record of it at the time, even
though, from what I understand, they found a record since then. - Because they did
n't
have the right information and they didn't record it
appropriately and correctly before the Hispanic
Chamber did their checking, they released the information
that was untrue and incorrect, which now is all in the media. So that didn't help. - I'm sure, if we went back to
them with the right attitude, (suspenseful music) they would verify that. I feel very strongly they
would try to make it right as much as possible. That's the type of organization they are. Another thing that impressed me a
bout Greg was he had volunteered
for several non-profits. In fact, he and I were
on the board of directors with the local YMCA, and he
took that as a a challenge. They had a golf tournament
that they have every year. And I still remember him
telling me how he accepted as a challenge that he was
gonna bring in the most money. And sure enough, he
brought in the most money from our organization, and I've
been very impressed with him and how much he is involved with that. He takes it as a personal c
hallenge and fulfills that challenge. - The other claims that Tom said was that I never worked with
these companies, but we did. We either did small events for them. We either did sponsorships
or co-sponsorship with them, or we did an event where
they were a sponsor. And we got the verbal
approval to use those logos. We got the verbal approval
to use their names. (hopeful music) When somebody gives you your word that you can use their
company logo on your website for doing something with them
an
d in partnership with them and for them, you wanna
think that's as good as gold. Well, obviously, we found out it wasn't. Policies change. Those several companies reached out to us and essentially just requested
us to remove their logo from our website. We did. But it was nice to know that
they acknowledged the fact that we were involved
with them to some degree or on some level, although
it may be years ago. - Many years ago, I started my career as an honest-to-gosh working journalist, I mean,
newspapers, magazines. And we had rules, and things
had to be done a certain way to protect our reputations, to protect the veracity and
integrity of not only the story but our publication and the
information we were putting out into the public. In the last decade or so,
it has come to my attention that those principles aren't
necessarily what guide and govern what is happening in the media. I am extraordinarily disappointed in the direction that a
lot of media has taken. - We came in, and we we
re
breaking the paradigm. I think one of the reasons
that we won our contract is because we had extremely low overheads. Some of the other companies, the professionals have high overheads, their own fleet of trucks, their own series of cold
warehouses throughout the country, and already had contracts in place. We had none of that. So when we started from scratch, we didn't know it couldn't be done. In other words, we went out,
we negotiated the best price with the farmers to buy the food. We neg
otiated the best price
with the transportation company to move that product
from point A to point B. And we stored the product
in five leased warehouses at a very good, reasonable price. We wear many hats, we
do whatever's necessary, whatever's necessary to make it a success
is what we do and that's what we're doing. Trucks start coming in around
Thursday here for dairy product. - Yeah, we have a great location here, as you can see behind us. This is, you know, one of five warehouses we had for
the project. - And so now we're through May 20th, and we have our invoicing call, and now we know what we need to do. We know our next steps. We
know where we go from here. We had been negotiating the
contracts for our cold storage, so that way, we could move
in, get everything done. And everything was
rolling really smoothly. The facility was excited to have us. They were so supportive,
knowing that the project that we were gonna be doing, the mission that we're gonna be fulfilling was somethin
g that they
could also hang their hat on, knowing that many good things
were gonna be coming out of their facility over
the next month or two. And so as we go through the process, we had to get our certificate
of occupancy, our COO. - A COO is a certificate of occupancy, which just allows us a legal
working space to work out of. Right now, it's pending. I think we have one or two right now. For this project, we have
about, actually, five areas or five bays, refrigerated
bays we're working out of
. So the other two, hopefully,
will be in very shortly so we can start on full production. - And we had everything
turned on, our electricity. We had the water ready to go. We paid for expedited fees. We made many, many phone calls. Our landlord here was in line hours before their offices
open to ask questions to try to get things done. But for some reason, out of our control, the fire department took
up to two weeks to come by, (suspenseful music) when it should have only been a few days. - We
had little delays getting a COO. Some people think it's political. Some don't. I really don't know. It took us a little more
time than we anticipated. - I don't know, and I really don't care why that may have happened. All I know is we're here. And that was just one of
a handful of struggles and challenges we had along the way. And it was one of the
first that we realized there are people against us. At first, we thought
it was just the media. And then slowly, we started realizing (tsk) there's
a lot more
politics involved in this than we ever imagined. - With this scope of project,
there are original plans. And all original plans do change often. And that's what happens
on this scope of project. But we are gonna start
seeing the trucks soon coming in and then the boxes going out. - So around mid-May, Henry Bonilla, Congressman Bonilla
reached out to me and said, "Hey, if you guys need
some help, we can help." - With all the supporters we have, one that I've really enjoyed
meeting is H
enry Bonilla, who's a former U.S. congressman, who's been a really good
support with his group for the succession of this project and for us to move forward with it. - Our publicist at the time kinda said, "You know, you should talk to Henry." They're the kind of company
that would be really good during this timeframe to help you out. They have the relationships. They have the political ties. "They have the knowledge." And lo and behold, Henry
at The Normandy Group, Dr. Goldberg and Ron over the
re, they also have the USDA background. So we brought them on board. We brought The Normandy Group on board. Thank you for coming on board with us. Oh, you bet, we're excited about being part of the team,
we're already got joined up with the team pretty fast. Well, that's what it takes, the
only way we know how to rock. We realized, now that we
were in the big leagues, we had to play with the big dogs. That's not what Iverson and
I intended to have happen. It's not what we wanted, but we quickly
realized we
had a target on our back. USDA, they all want to do everything
possible to help this be successful. You can't listen to some of those
little mouses out there, you know... (laughter) Thta's what I said, I'm here to make sure
the food is delivered safe, in a safe manner that's all I want is basically to make sure everything goes
out safe and goes out to the public, that's what we need. That's awesome. From the get-go, he told us,
"You're a small business. You're in the big leagues. Le
t us know what you need help with." But one thing he always
told me was to stay focused. The good thing is, we placed our first official order last
night, with Gourmet Foods of a million pounds of food. They are going to, I think as of today..they are
starting up factories, to my understanding, in California and also believe in Georgia and Florida. I don't have the
exact numbers of how many employees are going back to work but if it's not today or by Monday, we're probably
talking dozens, if not
maybe even a couple hundred, but we can get you
those numbers and verify. Yeah, that would be great. Just send them to me, or me, Ron
and John Goldenberg, that one who is connected to the USDA. You know, just send a little message on that and we'll try
to get that publicized for you, to the people that matter, because channel whatever here don't matter,
the paper doesn't matter..these people matter. - He told us, "Don't
worry about the media." Don't worry about the naysayers. Don't even listen
to the supporters. Stay focused. "Get the job done." You're going through a hell of a learning process right now.
But when it's all over and you get it done right, you win. - I don't always tell
people what's going on. I don't show a lot of emotion. But to hear that from somebody that's been in my shoes multiple times and to know that we had people behind us and that he confirmed that
people at the White House, at the top levels of the
USDA, wanted us to succeed, staying focused is all I could d
o. - I know the character of Greg. I know the integrity of CRE8AD8, his organization, his company. And I offered, I said,
"Hey, anything I can do?" Because apparently, we're
just making stuff up now. And if it's sensational and if it sizzles, well, all the better, and we'll
deal with those facts later, because pesky facts, I mean, "ugh, why let them ruin
a really good story?" - One thing that we didn't anticipate was the vast political
nature of this project. When we were awarded this project, w
e, "All right, we're feeding families." Everybody's gonna be on board with this. And everybody's gonna support us because we're all in this
together to make sure "that we are feeding our communities." And that wasn't the case. - Politics get involved. And it happens in every
single, you know, outfit that there is in this
country, unfortunately. And that's why people are elected. That's the things that
people are voted on. And so it's a natural thing
that things would be included. Now, when it co
mes to helping feed people, and you know, especially
being under a company in which there was bad
press and politics involved, and that bad press, you know, the press just aggravated the politics. - You know, I've probably
never seen a company that got this much negative press. I've probably never been
involved with a company that received this much criticism. And we really didn't
understand where it came from until we started looking
at the political side. And then it became very clear that thi
s was a political
attack upon this company. - [Reporter] U.S. Congressman
Lloyd Doggett says, "San Antonio families cannot eat on IOUs." He is furious about $39 million given to San Antonio company CRE8AD8 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. - Yeah, Lloyd Doggett, I haven't met him. I'm sure he is a wonderful guy, but he had all oppositions for this. And maybe it's a Democrat
versus Republican thing. And quite frankly, that's his business. - For some unfathomable reason, the bureaucracy chose
someone
who was a wedding planner, who'd never done this,
and now in operation, 750,000 boxes to be
delivered by the end of June. They've not delivered a single box. - It's unfortunate that
we didn't have the support on the state level and on the city level. Through council members,
legislators, lobbyists, there were many individuals
that were out for our failure, and they were out to prove a point that we never deserved this awardship. - [Reporter] Congressman
Doggett sent this letter to the U
SDA, demanding they
terminate the contract. - My experience working with the USDA or with Congress or with any
kind of government entity is there's a lot of red tape. There's a lot of issues that
have to be straightened out and have to be resolved. And that is something
that we see happen a lot. And that's why people
like us try to come in and help smooth out the way
and figure out what's going on. I guess the kind of law
that we usually practice is we practice criminal law. We practice civil la
w. We practice government law, especially considering that Nico LaHood, who is our managing partner,
was the district attorney of Bexar County. - Nico La Hood, N-I-C-O, last name LaHood, La capital H-o-o-d. I'm one of the managing partners
at LaHood Norton Law Group. I was born and raised in San Antonio, lived here all 48 years of my life, went to school here, been
involved in the community here, actually served the community
in elected office here. I love San Antonio. I don't believe I'm going
anywhere else except for heaven. - We came in to help
with their interactions with the government. Obviously CRE8AD8, they have
done something marvelous, something wonderful. And they were dealing with
the federal government at the time that they were doing that. And so our role is to help
them in their dealings with the government and to help Greg and to make sure that we
always are understanding the contracts and the
cooperation and the things that we need to do to make sure that the governmen
t gets what they need and that we're being
treated fairly as well. - I've known Greg for a number of years. We've known of each other, for sure. We've been acquainted with each
other through mutual friends and his involvement in the community and my involvement in the community. We had a lot of mutual people in between. Always very professional,
always very congenial. He has very good personalities of, he's a people person, as we say. And I had a very good impression of him before I had the oppo
rtunity and the privilege of defending him. - I think what happened
with the local media and everywhere else is
that they got an idea about who Greg was and
what CRE8AD8 was doing. And they took it and ran
with it, and it was wrong. And it was unfortunate because a person who should have been
celebrated has been, you know, dragged over the coals in the media, has been slandered by other
groups and libeled by reporters. And if you look at what he
did and what he accomplished, you would see that i
t's
a completely unfair way to have treated him. - From what we've seen now, now that we've dissected the situation, we've actually peeled the
onion back, as we say. It's a term of art that we use. The perception or the
depiction of Greg and his team in the media does not fit the truth. - Through this project
that the USDA granted, it did not matter who got the awardship. What mattered is that the
folks that were tasked, the to-do list should've had support regardless of whose hands it was in, a
nd because the importance of the program was to get the families
that were suffering fed. - Something like this hadn't been done since the Great Depression,
and people talk about, you know, massive food drives. And we're talking about a huge shutdown, feeding Americans all over the country simultaneously while trying
to integrate six feet of distance and trying to
safely deliver a product that ultimately would have
to be wasted in the landfills or going down the drains, 'cause we wanna cry about
,
oh, the money, the money, oh, crying about the food going to waste, because the reality of it
is, is the money is there because the food is there. The people need the food.
They need the infrastructure. We built an infrastructure in one month, a multimillion-dollar
company in one month. - Congressman Doggett is demanding answers on why CRE8AD8 was
selected to distribute food from agricultural producers
to families in need. He says the event planning company has no relevant experience
in food d
istribution. - How the media laid it out,
this impossible project, a bunch of inexperience, and
I'm, like, inexperienced? Man, I've ran trucks all over the country. Inexperienced in shipping, what? No. We had the experience. We had the know-how. Really, what it came down to is, did you have the money to make it happen? And sure enough, they did. They put their money
where their mouth was, and we were able to accomplish something. And you could see that
changing in the minds of a lot of the worke
rs here, that at first, there was a
little bit of resistance. We're like, "Well," because that's normal. First day of school, everybody's scared. "Oh, what's the professor gonna be like? Is it gonna be too hard of a test? You know, what kind of answers
do we need to come up with?" And really, they wanted
us to have the answers. The answers are easy when we're talking about feeding people. The answer is easy. It's like, if you do
this, then we'll do this. - We won the bid, like, we were saying, "
Hey,
get them out of here." That's their job, you know? They're there to get,
you know, their clicks and their views and their story read. That's how they make their money. I understand they got a job to do, but the way I saw it is
they have their job to do. My job is to feed these families, make sure this food is good. Make sure it goes out there to them. Make sure that these people
in here at production, they have the ability to work. - I wish that people's views and opinions didn't have as mu
ch sway as
they did in this project, because I think that we could've
fed a lot more families. - On one hand, I can understand why there was such an uproar, but I don't understand why the
uproar was of such magnitude that they wanted to disrupt the process instead of support the process. - It's not important what a reporter says. It just doesn't matter. You're doing what you can do
in the timeframe that you have and try your best. And as long as you can say that, then the press doesn't matter. I
t just doesn't. - I was not here to make a PR statement, and I was not here to make
CRE8AMEAL or CRE8AD8 look like, "Hey, look, we're doing something. And you know, we're thriving." And that's not what I was here to do. I was here to thrive, not
to talk about thriving. - And even after the fact, with all the attacks that
occurred and all the press, we knew that Greg and Iverson and CRE8AD8 could be successful. - Working with such
knowledgeable individuals of the restaurant community,
I wasn't ev
er concerned on, were we gonna be able to do this? We knew we were gonna be able to do this. We had the knowledge how to do this. We just had to scale up. When you start getting the
food in, where's it going to go? So, we have a warehouse on the south side of San Antonio, it's
on South 281 & 410 down there by Brooks City Base area. Okay, yeah..okay. It's five units, each of them is about 4000 square
feet, so about 20,000 square feet of all cooled space. 15 docks, so our trucks are going
to s
tart arriving intermittently. So that's where you're going to do it all? Yes, sir. When's that going to be functional? We're looking at Wednesday, at the latest,
to actually start rolling some boxes out. You've got a lot of people there, right? So next we're going to start with 25, we're going
to make sure we ease into it, do it the right way, see if there is anything
that we missed along the way. That's awesome, we're
all fired up for you man. - I think that the USDA
made a very wise choice in
providing a program
like this to folks like us. - On May 27th, we had
a call with the USDA, and it was a phenomenal call. They were happy. They were excited. They told us, coming
from the chief of staff, Lauren Walker told us what we
were doing was exactly the way they wanted this program to work. And it's exactly the reason why we were given this opportunity. So many good things happening. Got off the phone with
the USDA last night, and great things are just
in progress right now. So all we got
ta do is get
boxes to hungry families. And this is the first day
of the rest of the story. And then we got a call the next morning. And two hurdles came on May 28th. The first one was from the USDA, when our friends at
The Normandy Group said the USDA heard 95% of
what they needed to hear. And I said, "Well, what was the other 5% they needed to hear?" And they said, "Greg, they've
gotta get boxes out today." And I kinda started laughing,
and I said, "No, no." I said, "Our first boxes
aren't goin
g out till June 1st. That's when we're starting." You know, we didn't
even know how to invoice until a few days ago, so
June 1st is our start date. That's our goal. We have trucks coming in. We're gonna start packing June 1st. And our buddies and our friends
at The Normandy Group said, "No, Greg, if you don't get
trucks out or boxes out today, it's not looking good." And I kinda remember asking them, "Well, what do you mean?" And they said, "Greg," they said, "If you don't get boxes out today, y
ou're probably gonna get
your contract pulled." We've got thousands of boxes hitting on
Monday: why do we just need to push them today? And I guess because of the representatives wanted
to stir the pot and create some challenges, so we said okay, let's see what we can get out today. That
way, it'll buy us a couple days until the real stuff hits. (sighs) Wow. Let me tell you something. When you plan on something, it's tough. And as an event planner,
we always plan on things. We plan on things dow
n to
the minute. We are precise. Same thing as Iverson and
catering. We are precise. If we fail, we're fired. If we fail, we could be sued. - Yeah, so I believe the
first boxes we put out, I think, were on the
28th, I believe, of May, right around then. And we were asked to put them
out quickly through the USDA. What I'm going to need is somebody to drive to pick up boxes,
wherever they're going to be, wherever they're coming from. I'm at Los Patios for probably an hour,
maybe two, then I'm out
for the day... trying to figure out how to get
this done and get these boxes out. Because they're the first ones
going out, they need to be perfect. It was the produce that came together, at
the beginning nobody believed in the program, but we made them believe and a lot of them
participated to help us package a lot of produce. How many can Nino do? He can do a couple
hundred today... 200. Layren can do roughly 200. These came in 30 minutes ago verbally, so
they're gonna bust their ass to get it
done. So I don't want to commit to exactly
400 boxes a day, but... you know... Good, because the person I had the phone call with
yesterday... I didn't realize who they were, but he's the chief of this program. Loren something or the other... so he's
got our back, but the only thing they don't have right now, which is obviously a very big
piece, is they're nor producing yet, they've got everything else they'd like
to hear, but they're not producing yet, so the producing will get
people to shut
up a bit... I'm about to walk into Los Patios here in like two
minutes, so I'll see you guys in just a second... And we have how many
boxes today guaranteed? Guaranteed 200. From each company? No, guaranteed 200... I'm not sure
about SA Fresh, I am sure about Avila. We could probably even do six pallets with
Avila if we start pumping, because I'm gonna go down there with Chef Bill
and we're gonna start working. I'll go with you guys. I dont have anything
else I can do, except take calls, so.. Th
e plan for today is order, order, order. You know, we've got everything locked in. We've got all our suppliers locked in. - Fortunately, we had a
couple really great providers of produce in town that
wanted to work with us. So we took care of them so well
and supported them so much. SA Fresh are working on the same concept, so if we need
to pick stuff up and drop it off at the food bank, great. I already talked to Lauren, I told her to call them,
because it's like eight pallets before 5 o'clock.
- SA Fresh and Avila,
they came through for us. We approached them. We
said, "We're in a need. We need help." And they stepped up and helped. Working for CR8AD8 was a challenge, you
know, a lot of people didn't believe in them and they were trying to block
them from doing their job, but we got together and started working, at the
beginning a little slow, but a couple of weeks later we create a lot of people
helping us, I call myself..I say a company that helped
them help us, in other words. - T
hey also got a lot of backlash from it, which wasn't fair. You know, when you're in
a humanitarian effort, you shouldn't be ridiculed and
stoned for wanting to help. But they didn't care because they knew what it
meant to their small business. They knew what it meant
to their labor force. They knew what it meant to help people. - The USDA wanted to see
some results quickly, and we made it happen. - We got out around 1,000 boxes, I think, maybe a little bit more over that weekend. (chuckles) We w
ere really
proud of ourselves, 'cause we thought to ourselves, "The USDA asked, and we delivered." Two deliveries done today. We went to the San Antonio Food Bank. And we went and we
delivered to a non-profit called Church Under the Bridge
here in San Antonio, Texas. We delivered over 700 boxes today. There was a little over 200
yesterday, over 700 today. I think it was 720, ballpark, today. And thousands are gonna
start hitting on Monday. So this weekend is kind
of our ramp-up weekend, getting
things finally secured, making sure trucks are rolling on time, et cetera, et cetera. Thinking about it as an event,
this project as an event, our client initially just said,
"Hey, it's Thursday morning." And remember the event that
was gonna start on Monday? Nah, we've actually gotta start it, like, "in a couple of hours." That is a massive undertaking. And I know for a fact
there's not a lot of people, a lot of businesses that
could probably pull that off. But we did.
- Today has been very goo
d. You know, we continue to work. We had our first load yesterday, so we were very excited about that. As you say as anything
in the maiden voyage, you go in there, and you see. We wanna exceed the
expectations of our customers. Tomorrow is gonna be another exciting day. Tomorrow, we are going to bring on our first team associates. And we're gonna give them an orientation and welcome them into
this CRE8AMEAL project. So we're very excited about that. And we're busy, busy trying
to get everything
together. - The media, on the other hand, pelted us. "Oh, they've only delivered 700
or 800 boxes out of 750,000. Only 749,000 boxes left to go." - You know, I don't know
what else they have to do. With a small company that did a great job helping out thousands of families, I would've thought there'd have
been some support, you know? But I think they would
rather see this project fail than the people get fed,
and that is a problem. - In a nutshell, it's unfortunate that we didn't have the local
support, that we didn't have the
local media on our side. Whenever the political side
of things get in the way of the mission, the
only people that suffer are the families. - Okay, the politicians are saying this. The community is saying that, you know? You know, I hear somebody
sending me a text about a newspaper article. And to see what actually was going on, it just didn't faze me. I guess I felt like what Greg would say, we just have to prove that we can do this. And I was, you know, hard o
n myself to make sure that he had
the support he needed. If he needed and his staff or his team needed five
more people the next day, then I was gonna work 'til midnight to get those five additional players to come in the next day. I spent the whole weekend
creating the internal processes for the HRIS system. I haven't onboarded anyone because, again, we're still going through this
internal workflow process, but we did get about eight
applicants over the weekend, Friday and Saturday. - You have
my approval to go ahead if you think that we
may be a little strained for those last 15 to 20 people, because that's the thing
people don't realize, is we're going from a
roughly $2 million company to a $40 million company in two weeks. It's a big, big feat, right? - All right, so is the game
plan to make sure we're focusing on those people first in this first week, to get them trained up, and then we have the bulk of
the other people coming out next week? - Whoever's coming in, I'm 100% in. If
I need to attend the training and then train those that
come in through the process, I can do that. They are coming from referrals. So most likely, once I get
the workflow processed, I'll be able to onboard them and then get them through the system. - Is that gonna include
any kind of upfront safety, not necessarily training, but safety features that
we're touching point- - They are gonna have an
orientation when they come. So Natali has two hours that
she wants to cut through and provide some t
ype of training. - [Lauren] Okay.
- And staff- - [Lauren] Are they gonna
be focused on food safety, USDA regulations, not
necessarily warehouse safety, OSHA information?
- Right, right. That's what she was hired to do. I'm Natali, again I am the food safety
consultant. I am here today to give you all the factory practices for handling food. I've been in the food industry for about 12 years
now. I mostly work in the produce warehouses, I've pretty much done everything from
operations, shipping, r
eceiving, to food safety. I do have a food science degree from Kansas State for
food safety, so I created presentation for you guys just to kind of let you know how to protect
food to make sure that we are delivering safely. - We have a safety consultant that came in and did the training, and so
we did a lot of onboarding. We will be using some
recruiting strategies that you may have already heard. We had a radio ad over the weekend. We also are sending out a
Spanish version of that. - [Gregorio
] Do you have that ad so people can listen to it real quick? Did you find it? - [Announcer] Help families
in need. Make money. CRE8AD8 is hiring for the Farmers to
Families Food Box Program. They're looking for food handlers, forklift operators, general help, and those who wanna be
part of something amazing. - So far, I've called three, so I'm just going down the list. I need to call 10 more people for that. So working through the list... We'll probably use them
on the line production, where the
y'll be assembling
the boxes for us. I certainly appreciate you taking my calls and helping me kind of figure
this stuff out. (laughing) We're also hiring, so we know we need one. And we'll have our
warehouse logistics manager do some training as well. And it will be from 8:30
to 12:30. Any questions? We were able to capture
at least 30 employees that orientation. - Out of the people that
we brought on board, Sandy, you know, our fantastic bookkeeper and accountant for this project, Sandy, she i
dentified a group, an
organization here in town, Adult & Teen Challenge. - Adult & Teen Challenge
is a non-profit ministry that's been around since 1958. And we extend hope to men and women who have found themselves in
the predicament of addiction, whether it's drugs, alcohol,
depression, anxiety. And we provide a 12-month
residential program to help them recover and put
them on a journey of healing and help them to become productive
members of society again. - They were phenomenal.
They
were on time every day. There was always, you know, anywhere between 10 to 20, 25 of them. - [Iverson] Always good attitudes. - [Gregorio] Oh, always
positive attitudes. - Our day was great. We
made lots of boxes, and- - It went by a lot faster than I thought. There was always something,
like, a constant thing to do. - [Worker] Yeah. - To be able to partner
up during this pandemic and be able to partner with
CRE8AMEAL was a huge blessing to our ministry because we
were able not only to serve, b
ut just to be a part of something
so exciting during a time when a lot of people
were not feeling hope. We were able to provide that. - And I could just see
the looks in their eyes because they saw how much they
were gonna be able to work, but equally to that, how much they could
contribute and give back. And I just remember that, just seeing that in
everybody's eyes, just. I'm really excited to be part of the start up of this
company, and help feed a lot of families in America in need. - We wer
e so very welcomed
by everybody who was there. I think they were excited
for us to be there. And the atmosphere was always very jovial. Everybody was super excited to be there and be a part of this movement. We're just excited for
the farmers of America! - So that was a good
day for introducing them to the program of CRE8AD8 and the Farmers to
Family Food Box Program. - 'Cause some of these ladies didn't know what they wanted to do. They're like, you know, some
of them were very young. And they'
re like, "Well,
when I finish our program, I'm not too sure what
I wanna do with life." So it's nice to really see
that, they told me this. They're like, "I'm glad
I got to see production. I'm glad I got to see
the food side of stuff." - [Worker] It was a learning
experience, that's for sure. I've never done warehouse
work before, so it was great. I really enjoyed it. - [Worker] And it's great knowing that it's for a good cause. - The days went by so fast because we just had a good time doing it
and just felt good to serve
the community in this way. - A lot of us lost our jobs. A lot of us were looking at, how are we going to feed our families? And this became that solution. This became that opportunity, despite all that negative press. - Some of these people
were desperate for work. Some people had been laid off
before the whole coronavirus, so they weren't even getting
unemployment at the time. It was crazy. Some people were just,
they needed the job. - The COVID really shut things d
own. And then not having
employment after a month really opened my eyes to the opportunity that was presented with
the families to be fed through this program. And took Sandy's call again,
a little more seriously, about coming on board to
manage the five warehouses and getting them up and running. - On the first day when
we had our orientation, I didn't intend (laughing)
to take control, but it's just kinda something
that I naturally do. (laughs) - [Employee] By the way, we
have units B11 throug
h B14. - [Lauren] 10, 10 through 14. - [Employee] 10 through 14. I'll let you find the light switch. - [Lauren] I'll lose my mind. I just kind of jumped in (laughing) and did some basic safety precautions. I'll wait till everybody's in. We went through the
basics of USDA guidelines, CDC regulations, and then we
walked through the warehouse, and we were able to go
over safety protocols. - And following very strict
guideline of cleaning in the mornings and every hour and going through to making
su
re temperatures were good and checking the employee's temperatures and cleaning the utensils
that the employees were using and cleaning some of the products that were coming in off the truck if they didn't fit what I
felt that they needed to be up to standards and replacing boxes or redoing a tape job just to
make people feel more at ease when they receive this food,
that it was clean looking, that it was well kept,
it looked professional. - So the warehouse producers, once they entered the buil
ding, took a temp log of their temperature, made sure they were good to go, given all the proper PPE
wear, gloves, face wear. And we changed those
out throughout the day in accordance to the
guidelines, just making sure everyone was good to go, healthy, and capable of getting the
job done in the best way for the guidelines that
we're restricted on now. - We cleaned. Some people were cleaning in between, some people were cleaning after. Every evening, after the shift, we made sure to have a time
period where, okay, break down, clean, okay. This stuff is in the way of this spot. So clean this, move it around,
clean under, move it back. We'd take cleaning wipes. We'd take sanitizer up and
down rails, the bathrooms. We were cleaning out
floors, docks, everything. One person accidentally cut
open a cheese with their knife when they're opening a box. We couldn't send that
out. We had to throw it. There was a milk that was leaking just a little bit from the top. We can't trust that that seal
was good. We had to make sure that
that got thrown out. Part of it was food safety. We're making sure that, in here, part of everyone's responsibility
is the food safety. So we had to keep a good eye on that too. - We were supposed to do
all three boxes out of here. We had a really strong
push on the dairy here, our great dairy boxes. One thing that we were hoping
to do was bring in a lot of the local products from local farmers and local produce companies here in town. But because we got the pr
ojects and some of them did not get the project, we were actually
blackballed by some of them, and they chose not to work with us. - With the COVID and with the pandemic, there's so many distribution businesses that started to suffer,
and we were coming in as an entity to be able to
still support those businesses. Unfortunately, not everybody
saw it as an opportunity to help their business thrive and survive. So a lot of doors were shut on us. And that's not just with
the distribution world. Tha
t came from the food bank world, too. - Before we bid on the project, we reached out to the
San Antonio Food Bank. The USDA had suggested to
talk to the food banks. And so obviously, that made sense. The food bank is a food bank. - The submission went in
for the RFP through the USDA April 30th. Prior to that, I believe
it was April 28th, we had some dialogue and
conversations and emails through the San Antonio Food Bank. - And in the beginning,
it was a very informative, very cordial, very frien
dly conversation. So we trusted that. And they were very quick
to get us just the basics of information we needed
to just kinda help us build the proposal, right? Understand what they needed, understand what their demands were, understand where some of their pricing was so we can kinda get a better feel for how to serve them the best. So we kinda already had an idea that we're gonna help
the food bank, right? We thought everything good
came from the food bank. Hi, my name is Amy Kosar, and I am
calling from Feeding
America in reference to the USDA food box program. We were just reaching out to connect
about your winning bid with the USDA, we wanted to make sure that we could
provide some resources for you all to help make sure that this distribution to
feeding organizations is as smooth as possible. If you wouldn't mind giving me a call back,
I'd really appreciate it. - Working with many of the
food banks here are great. However, with San Antonio Food Bank, they had a real idea of how
they wanted and where they wanted the food to go. With that being said, we had to look at the
whole Southwest region, not just one food bank
here in San Antonio. - We sat down with Eric
Cooper and his team over at the food bank after we
had been given this contract, probably within a few days. And they were shocked. They were 100% shocked that we
had been given this contract. But now we were in it, and
we had to work together. And we had to find a way, the
best way to make this happen. So of cou
rse, we had to get some education from the food bank. Iverson and I were at the meeting with about four or five individuals, and we trusted everything they said. We took what they said as gold because we thought the food
bank was doing the best good. We were wrong. - They do great things here in
San Antonio at the food bank. But I do think, being
such a large operation, they wanted to have some more
control than they ought to be. - One of the most interesting
things that I found when we started
discussions with Eric and his team at the San Antonio Food Bank were that he wanted to control everything. There was no doubt in my mind. There was no doubt in Iverson's mind. There was no doubt in anybody's mind. And it was a conversation
that we had recorded, not realizing it would actually help us. We actually did it because it was gonna be a very detailed conversation. So we wanted to be able to go back and understand what was talked about. If we missed something, we
could share it with the
team. That's really what it was
meant for, just to document and go back and remind ourselves
what needed to be done. One of the things that really perturbed us was Eric made several comments
about him being in charge, him being the air traffic
controller, if you will, and make sure all the food was
coming through San Antonio. The way it's designed will bust... it's just... I mean more of it's gonna go in our area because of the logistics,
you're gonna have more trucks that can turn and your theo
ry of take care of San Antonio
and then go out from there, it might just have to be that way to try
to do our best to consume the contract. It's gonna be tough in that three-week
period with that kind of volume. - Eric Cooper, he's got a great
position at the food bank. You know, I think he's
worked hard to be there, to get where he is. And I know he's had a
lot of help to do it. I'm not doubting his job
and his career or his talent or support, but he has
his hands full over there. I know Eric a
little bit
professionally in the past. With all of his success
in helping out thousands if not millions of people in this state, I think he's gotten to really understand what works best for him. And on a project like this,
it's not about what works best for one person or one non-profit. It's the whole project. - From the first conversation
I had with the CEO of the local food bank, I knew it was very evident that he was out to secure a business agenda, and he was out to secure
his own operation
s. - One thing that just didn't sit right was we just felt like there
was something else there. And what led us to that was because this program is a box program. And Eric made it very clear more than once that there were other vendors
that were drop shipping or direct shipping food to them loose. I'm hearing from vendors that USDA is now
rethinking the box packing, so... like... I'm wondering if you guys
had any of that conversation because a lot of vendors are shipping full
truckloads to food
banks just saying, hey... you know... we're
sending a... you know...produce and they're just skipping
the whole box packing... No. We didn't hear that yesterday. The only box question that we heard
yesterday, was can we use a different box? I think they were more curious if it had to be a
cardboard box versus a plastic box or some other things, that's the only question I remember
hearing regarding boxing, at all. Yeah. - Working with the San Antonio Food Bank, they wanted all the
food to be drop
shipped. I'm not sure why, 'cause that
wasn't part of the agreement in the contract with the USDA, you know? I know they're trying to help people out, but we had to follow the rules
and regulations from USDA. - So part of me believes
that there was some sort of financial gain on the back end. Now, I'm not against that necessarily, but if that was true, and if it is true and he wasn't forthcoming about it, that's what I'd be more upset about. If USDA says, hey we are going to let you drop
ship i
t directly from manufacturer to the food bank and if they're agreeing to that, we're cool with
that, I mean... that's going to be a big blessing. What about the cost of boxing? That's where I
think the USDA is going to have some issues. Yeah, the cost of boxing... we would not box it, we would
take that raw product and integrate it into our distributions and at some point our supply chain, it might
be boxed but in other times it might not be. - I just thought to myself, "Okay, maybe I am getting
played by Eric." In my mind, I thought, "We
gotta give these guys a chance." We have to believe in what they're doing. We have to work with these guys, right? We have to give them the
benefit of the doubt, "even if they seem a little not fair." - Through the development
of our relationship, we started seeing that it became a very unhealthy
relationship very quickly. - What Eric wanted us
to do was circumvent, and what he encouraged
us to do, I should say, was kinda circumvent the process. I thi
nk he made it sound like
he was trying to be helpful. Like, "Hey, Greg, CRE8AD8
team. Don't put it in a box. Just ship us a truckload of
apples. We'll take care of it." Well, that bothered us
because, number one, we were being asked to do something that was not in the contract. Number two, we were being
asked to do something that we didn't bid on,
which would've been fraud. Number three, we were almost pushed into not even listening
to the USDA by Eric, all on recorded tapes, again, not because
we
thought we would need them down the road, but because
we wanted to be able to go back, just like any
other business professional, and go listen to our notes again to make sure we didn't miss anything. And when our team heard
this, they were appalled. I think you are in a driver seat wit the USDA
to say, look you Idiots gave me the money so let us come up with a
plan that may actually work, and I think that's what I
said in the other two options, ...if we do that though, the question is... we'
d be consuming more fuel cost and
transport cost, which means we'd feed less. ...Yeah...yeah... That's the downside though...and we're getting
paid per box we're getting paid on volume, so that's the thing, is if they say well that's fine,
just deliver lexx boxes, well that's not the solution because now we're not getting
paid for those additional boxes. - On that note, too, these boxes are not supposed to be broken. And some of these food
banks, they would break them, break the boxes, and I don
't
know why they chose to do that. But that is actually, you know, not part of the program and
not part of the contract. So they're going against
USDA when they did that. - The San Antonio Food
Bank and Houston food banks wanted to break the packaging, which would have gone against federal law and the contract terms
that we had in place. The USDA told us, "If they're
going to break packaging, you need to stop servicing them." (tense music) There was no way we
were gonna put millions, hundreds of
thousands of
families and millions of people in jeopardy because one or
two food banks felt entitled to do what they wanted
to do with the food. That's not the way this program worked. I know they do good things, but he lied to me. He lied to our team. And he lied about things that
really just deterred our team from wanting to feel
comfortable and confident knowing who they were helping. (dramatic music) And then he threw us under the bus, saying that we didn't
deliver on our promises. All thro
ugh the early part of June, he provided us the demand. He said, "Oh, you know, you guys are gonna have about 450 trucks. Here's where we can put them." We never promised him he was gonna get a certain amount of trucks. In fact, he wanted a very
large amount of trucks. - Instead of being a a partner, they decided to be nice to our face and talk bad behind our back. - [Gregorio] I'll let
you do this real quick so you can go back into your meeting. - [Eric] Thanks, man. - [Gregorio] I appreciate yo
u very much. - [Eric] Seriously?
- [Gregorio] Yeah. - [Eric] Thank you. This is, like, freaking awesome. - [Gregorio] Good. Nice and sturdy. - [Eric] So they'll move this out. Hey, so Eric Cooper, president, CEO at the San Antonio Food Bank, and we're here at the food bank for one of our pop-up distributions. We actually have some CRE8AD8 product that's here at this distribution. It looks beautiful. We've got some great produce boxes that these families will be getting. There's nothing more
nutr
itious than fresh produce. And our partners at CRE8AD8
have packed those boxes. They're getting that to
us for this distribution. And it's just gonna help
us nourish these families in their time of need. - And that two-faced nature that we experienced really
tainted the relationship that we had with our
local food bank sources. - The food banks,
unfortunately, in my opinion, reported things to the
news that didn't help us. Let's just put it that way. - One of the other things
that was very surpr
ising to us was the fact that
not only did he want to be in control of everything, he
discouraged us from working with almost any other non-profit. We'll serve anyone that needs food..that's
legitimate, but I want to make sure you guys... if we're going to work together,
you can't go and serve another non profit, because it'll undermine the
distributions that I have... plus, if USDA is pulling you... well then, you've taken all
that liability to screen the clients, all that kind of stuff Yeah, I
understand. Correct. So... we'll do all that
for you... and um... So you have that huge support throughout? ...Yeah... - He did not want to share the
food with other non-profits. Our goal was to help everyone, and we wanted to do as much
as we could to help everyone. Eric was dismissive to a town that had just a very
few amount of residents. We're talking 100, maybe 200 residents. This county right here, it has the highest
rate of poverty as fas as smaller counties but... it's 140 people... Rig
ht... - We wanted to deliver to that community, a very underserved community,
although very small, and Eric discouraged us to do that. ...Right.. So... you're gonna get some atta boys
for serving a really needy community... ...but, it's 140 people... - The two-faced nature that we
experienced was uncalled for. And it made everybody's job harder. - He played me. He played our team. He told us a lot of
things that were not true about other organizations. And he did everything he could to deter us
from working with anybody
except the food bank network. And I didn't think that was fair. I didn't think that was something
that we should be doing. This is not why we got in the project. We got in the project to
feed people and help people. - We were able to bring
to light a major gap in the food bank's distribution system. And because we found a
better way to operate out from under certain people's
thumbs, that pissed him off. And he went further and dug deeper and tainted us even further beca
use we were jeopardizing
his bottom line. And we were jeopardizing
his profit margins (chuckles) or non-profit
margins, however you wanna say. - You know, I'm not too sure
why Eric chooses to double down on something that's not factual. Why somebody chooses to
make a public announcement that there was nothing ever pre-existing the time that we submitted
the proposal is beyond me. We would not have been
able to put together a more comprehensive proposal
without the additional details that were pr
ovided to us by him and his staff at the food bank before we ever submitted the proposal. So 100%, we had a relationship before the proposal was ever submitted. - Just makes me angry. (laughing) (clears throat) It's an emotional thing to put your political opinions above getting the
families fed, rather than, we just need to get the job done, and we need to do it in
whatever way that we can. - And then we started getting
calls from other non-profits and other faith-based organizations. And they
said, "We'd
like to get some help." And I said, "Well, we're
coordinating our master efforts" through the food bank. Please reach out to the food bank. Please, at the food bank's request, please reach out to the
food bank and sign up "so you guys can receive some assistance." Almost every single call
from these other non-profit and religious organizations
told us flat out, "The food bank does not help us. The food bank won't help us. The food bank, you know,
and us don't get along. They don't do
this. They don't do that." And all of a sudden, I just
was filled with confusion. I'm like, "Wait a minute." The San Antonio Food Bank tells me they help out hundreds of non-profits. They tell me they help
out other non-profits "and other food banks in the region." Each food bank has kinda
their own region, right? But the San Antonio Food Bank says that they're gonna do this. Why should I not believe them, church? And the church said, "Because they don't
believe in our mission, and those don't
align with
the policies that they have." - There's many... (clears throat) (Lauren sighs) There's many families that
I gave boxes to personally, that were so thankful because nobody else was coming to them. - That was mind-blowing to me. But what was even more amazing was, when I mentioned Cornerstone
Church to Eric Cooper probably that same day or
even maybe the next day, and I said, "Eric," I said,
"You'll never believe this." I said, "Cornerstone Church can help out." They can do this. They c
an do that. And so we'd like to help them out because we understand that
you guys aren't able to, maybe due to policies or the current rules "that you guys have set up." So I was excited when I told Eric that, "Wow, Eric, we found Cornerstone Church, and they're really gonna help us out. They're also gonna get food to other areas and everything else." Eric Cooper squashed it and said, "You don't wanna give to them.
You shouldn't give to them. They're not gonna fulfill
what they're telling you th
ey're gonna fulfill, and
then we're gonna have to go and rescue the food." That was probably the
first time back in May where I was like, "What do you mean? Like, hold on, Eric Like, we're all serving the same people. We're all helping people." (Lauren sighs) - At the end of the day, it
took away from the families. And the leaders of our local
food banks made it very evident that they were out to
secure their own business rather than to secure
commodities for their families that they were servic
ing. - I was jaded. I'm not gonna lie. I was jaded. I thought people in that kind of position were out to do good things. - They like to be the heroes
that's saving the community. But in reality, they're excluding a lot of our community members. And once we started having
our own enlightenment to that setback and
becoming more wise to it, we knew we had to step in,
and we knew we had to be the ones regulating that partnership, not the other way around. And we finally got to
a point of being secu
re in our knowledge, being
confident in our knowledge of how this food was
getting to the communities, that we said enough was enough. We made a choice that they
would get a bare minimum just to say that we are
working with them still. We didn't wanna be under the thumb of one monopolized feeding
source here in San Antonio. - Yeah, you know, the food
banks for their own right, you know, want to own their distribution. But for us getting all this
product and all these boxes, this last mile, we re
ally had to look at the faith-based organizations. - Elevate is a church here in
the Phoenix metropolitan area. We're a church. We love people. We connected with CRE8AMEAL, and they started sending us the food, and we started distributing
it out to our community and to our city here. - I'm Pastor Willard Avery. I'm pastor at the new Zion
Missionary Baptist Church here in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The CRE8AMEAL team contacted me one day and asked me about the food deliveries and people that were in
need. And I expressed that there's
a lot of people in need, a lot of hungry people, a lot
of people that's out of work. We are a central location or a hub. And what we do is have the
truck make the deliveries here. Then we have trucks come out
of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Roswell, New Mexico, and
they pick up boxes of food to carry back to their communities. That way, we not only reach
the local community here, but we go out as far as 150
miles just from this location. - [Iverson] And these
f
aith-based organizations really allowed us to get it
to the people in need more so. - St. Vincent de Paul
distributes food boxes all throughout the state of Arizona. We have over 80 neighborhood
locations run by volunteers. And those volunteers meet our
neighbors where they're at and distribute food boxes to them. So the Farmers to Families boxes we got from CRE8AMEAL was really
helpful in meeting the needs of families in their homes. So this is our family
evening meal drive-through. So every ni
ght, Monday to
Friday from 4 to 6 p.m., families in need here in Phoenix can come drive through their
cars, pick up to-go meals, pick up CRE8AD8 food boxes from the Farmers to
Families Food Box Program. Our staff and volunteers
use the window every night to greet our guests through and hand out all those
different need items, hand out those Farmers to
Family Food Boxes from CRE8AMEAL and really still just meet the needs. - The difference that I
found out that's alarming for me, is the food
banks
have distributions, which is fantastic. The faith-based organizations,
they do, as well. But once they distribute,
they have many more means of allocations to take it to the people that cannot get to the food
bank distribution points. - We have a great coalition of pastors and other community people. And they come from all over the region to get the food and to distribute it. This is much easier than
giving it to just individuals, that we giving it to these churches and other community organiza
tion. And in turn, allow them to
distribute it in their community. - There is a large lack
of support resources, in not just this food program, but in food programs for rural counties. And what CRE8AD8 was able to do was to contract trucking lines and contract cold storage warehouses that we could bring in produce, we could bring in dairy, and we could bring in,
most importantly, protein. And we brought them in
on their 18-wheelers. Then we put them into cold storage. That gave us time to set
up
distribution hub sites, as we call them, that we could push into those rural counties. - We started finding better relationships with faith-based operations. We started finding better relationships with independent 501(c)(3)s
that do not operate with the food bank just
because of these same setbacks. - This food distribution here, what CRE8AMEAL is providing here, it's serving a real need. And the people is really
helping the people. And so it's truly a blessing. - We are incredibly grateful
fo
r what we've received through CRE8AMEAL and Farmers to Families. I believe it's making an incredible impact across the United States. We know it has for our community. And you know, and in times like this, we definitely know that programs like this are absolutely necessary, to
be able to fill gaps in cities that might not ever get filled
without programs like these. - We really thought that partnering with the food bank network
was going to do the most good. We quickly realized that partnering w
ith multiple food banks, non-profits, faith-based organizations, and schools were actually gonna do a greater good. - CRE8AMEAL had to make a
major policy change and pivot, because certain food banks
and their regulations, they won't work with
faith-based organizations. You can't share your belief. There's certain things
that they operate under that if you were not in this industry like CRE8AMEAL was not,
you're not aware of that. And so that could put you into bad light with those food banks an
d with
their downstream networks. And so when they started
to make that pivot and they say it may be
easier to work directly with the end-user
organizations such as ourself, we're the end user, we're the ones who would traditionally
go to the food banks and pick up and pay a
maintenance fee or something, and we get X number of boxes, and then we take it back out and distribute it in the community. We're the boots on the ground. And what CRE8AMEAL did
was that they realized, "We can go directly t
o the
grassroots organization." And we went through with the criteria that they were looking for. A wide distribution, you
could run dock-height trucks. You could take 18-wheeler deliveries. You could distribute not just North Texas, but you could push into West Texas. You could push into Oklahoma. And that had our name written all over it, so we started to operate. - I'm Bless Parker, and I'm the creator of the Miami Good Neighbor Project, and I'm also the mayor of Miami, Oklahoma. I got a call
from my good
friend Rick Aldridge, who runs the Oklahoma
Emergency Response Team. And he said, "Man, we've
got a warehouse space. We do the distribution." They do it during hurricanes,
floods, tornadoes, whatever natural disaster happens. They respond and do the food
distribution warehouse work, so it's kind of a perfect fit for us. - I'm Rick Aldridge. I'm the logistics
manager, warehouse manager for the Good Neighbor Project. And I'm also the owner and operator of the Oklahoma Emergency Respo
nse Team. - So when it first started, we weren't with the Farmers
to Families Food Box Program. We were just doing this on our own. We were getting community donations. We would get checks from different people. We had different fundraisers
going on to raise money. As that went on, the community
donations started to run out a little bit 'cause
people weren't working. They were waiting on the stimulus checks, and people were having a hard time. So we were kinda getting
to where we didn't know how
we were gonna feed people. We found out about the Farmers
to Family Food Box Program. And so we had the produce coming. We had the milk coming. We were falling short on the protein. We didn't know where we
was gonna get the protein for people. So we did have people in the community that were donating beef
and chicken and pork and deer meat and stuff like that. So we were trying to
work that into some boxes to make sure that people had protein. But then we got in contact with CRE8AMEAL, and I go
t into contact with Kelly. And Kelly's the one that hooked us up on getting these protein
trucks of chicken, and it was amazing. We were getting 80,000
pounds of chicken a week, and we were putting it out the door. We were putting it to people's tables. There was none going to waste. - The milk and the
produce do very well here, but once you introduce chicken into what we're able to give out as free, our line, the first day, we did over 2,000 cars through
our line the very first day. - When we k
new that the
San Antonio Food Bank didn't align with some of
the faith-based non-profits, we knew we had to do something,
and we were here at home, so why not help people out here at home? But we also wanted to
go as far as we could. And that's where, you know, this great group in Colorado
City comes into play, Ogden, Utah, you know? These are areas that are very underserved. - I met the CRE8AMEAL program
through the LA Dream Center and through the Phoenix Dream Center. They had been receiving f
ood, more food than they could
handle, and so they contacted us to see if we could use
some additional food here. We have some very large
refrigerators and freezers here. And we have a great need in
this community, so we were able to receive several
semi-trucks worth of food. So my name is Glyn Jones, and my wife and I are
the executive directors of the Short Creek Dream
Center in Colorado City, Hildale, Utah, Arizona. It's a town that has a
very high poverty level. So we're excited to be able t
o offer food to the community here. Because the Dream Centers
are a worldwide organization, we were able to get contacted by the Farm to Families program, who asked us on multiple
occasions if there's food that we could use, and
we can always use food here in this community. So this community is a unique community. It's a little bit of a
cultural bubble here, right on the Arizona-Utah border. It's a fundamentalist community. It's a fundamentalist
Latter Day Saints community. Still practice the p
ractice of polygamy in this community here. A very high poverty rate, we see a poverty rate of about 75%. And we see the population
is about 70% children under the age of 17, so
it's a town of children. The need for food here, because of the departure of the
ruling church that was here, if you have heard anything
of Warren Jeffs or the FLDS, this is that community. Warren Jeffs is now in jail
for life plus 20 years. But it left sort of, we
call it a refugee community here from this religious war
that kinda took place here. So the high poverty, high amount
of children that are here, not a whole lot of jobs
that have been here in the community, so the need for food and food subsidy is tremendous. - And these are the underserved
areas that most people, I think, wanna know more about. When our team realized the
need was so much greater than we anticipated,
and we had the ability to serve many more people geographically and spread the food out
much more, they stepped up, and they identified
some
of these underserved areas that we didn't know anything about. - [Iverson] Sure. - My name is Alan Chance,
and I am admin assistant here at Salt Lake City Mission. And this is just a little
bit of what we do here. And we have a pantry back in this area, and this is our food pantry. This is pretty much where
a lot of the magic happens at for our community, 'cause
we pretty much deal with all of the Greater Salt Lake area. It was actually a really exciting endeavor when we got our trucks fro
m CRE8AMEAL. When they made contact with us and we started getting our trucks, it was a beehive of activity here. It was amazing about the
amount of product that we got. - We had what we thought was
gonna be a very harmonious relationship with the
San Antonio Food Bank. It turned a little different
than we anticipated, but what they did is they did
present us with the food banks in the Feeding Texas network, what their demand schedule and
what they could really use. - The Food Bank of Rio Grande
Valley has been servicing the
Valley for 35 years. We serve about 64,000
people on any given week. Normally, right now, during COVID season, it's been 127,000 people
on any given week. - In our district, we have
11 counties that we service. CRE8AMEAL was brought to our attention through the San Antonio Food Bank. We were looking for partners at that time. We already had a great
produce partner at the time. CRE8AMEAL was able to get
us two of the products and a little bit of the produce that we
would either be lacking
or willing to give a try to off of the produce
partner that we already had. - You have these key people,
almost use a word like superstars or captains
in their own community that just, they know how to get it done. - I think it's really great
to have these superstars like we were talking about, especially Libby down at the
Rio Grande Valley Food Bank, (chuckles) RGV Food Bank. She's great. - I think the biggest highlight I had was making that connection. And as soon as I
made that
connection with Kelly, like, I think, I wanna say
it was like two days later, three days later, we had
our first shipment here. And as soon as that
first shipment came in, those trucks just started rolling in. We were receiving about, I'm gonna say about three loads per week we had been receiving. Every time I saw her name
come up on my cell phone, like, "Oh, she's got another load for us," so it was very good. My experience with Kelly
and CRE8AD8 was great. - You know, when I think
ab
out food banks like that, that are kind of like a hub to those areas of at least Texas in this particular case, when I think about how resilient they are, 'cause you know, down here,
what people don't, you know, don't experience in
other parts of the US is, you know, we get hurricanes. Yes, everybody has natural disasters, but we get the hurricanes. We get other kinds of bad storms. And so I love the fact that
RGV Food Bank and Libby and her team, as well
as the other food banks and non-profits,
all share food. - [Iverson] They do.
- You know? You know, if there's food
at RGV Food Bank in Pharr, and they have enough of it
and somebody else needs, maybe it's Coastal Bend, you know? Maybe it's Santos over there. Maybe it's somebody in La
Feria or Brownsville, Laredo. - I'm glad how they have each other's back between these non-profit organizations. Nothing against the larger food banks, but there's really a
network in the community between the food banks on how
they watch out for each ot
her. And that's what a project
and a team and success for feeding people is all about. - Mercy Food Pantry started two years ago, three years ago, and we
have been distributing to our community, helping families. We were referred through the food bank of the Rio Grande Valley, which, they were the ones that
contact us through CRE8AMEAL to help the community. And we got a call that they
wanted to send us a truck full of milk to help
feed the families here We are affiliated with the food bank
in P
harr, Texas, we serve the community. I received a call from CRE8MEAL
we got in contact and we scheduled a date, so we were able to
receive a truck with milk. - You know, these are
areas where you have a lot of immigrants that come over. Again, who cares how they got here? But you have these areas of
Texas where you have people from Mexico that have immigrated
into the United States. Those are really underserved
areas, so we were really proud and really happy to be
able to serve those. I know you
had an experience over at- - Yeah, it was Norma, Norma Fuentes. She was just a delight to work with. Her and her organization
down there was fantastic. And like you said, they wanna help as many people out as they can. - My favorite moment was when
I saw that truck drive up on 7th Street, 116 7th Street in La Feria, where our church is. And it was full of milk,
and the doors open, and we saw that milk come into
our community to distribute, to help families out. And that was one of my favorite m
oments. - She was great and just the biggest heart and then just had the mission and passion to really help her community out, and... - Heartbreaking thing was
when Kelly told me that, unfortunately, that program had ended, that we were no longer
able to help families through CRE8AMEAL. (dramatic music) CRE8AMEAL has been a
blessing to our community. We saw that in families that were fed. The absence of CRE8AMEAl
in Phase 2 has affected us. It was a donation that was
very helpful for the familie
s. - I can tell you, when I found out that you guys didn't get Phase 2, that was one of the devastating deals. So you guys were the most uplifting and kinda the most devastating for us because that chicken's
so important for us here. And like I said, now
that I've called around to all these other places since
you guys didn't get Phase 2, it's been really tough for
us to get enough protein for the kids 'cause nobody
else wants to deliver here. - We were getting lots
of protein from them a couple
times a week. And when you lose that much protein that you're able to put out to people, it makes a big impact on
the people that we serve. - After we had distributed the chicken that we received from CRE8AMEAL
and Farmers to Family, we saw a gap of being able
to provide sufficient protein moving into Phase 2 and Phase
3 here in our community. - The lack of presence of CRE8AMEAL in Phase 2 is devastating,
not just for our organization but for all of the other
non-profits, churches, community gro
ups, local
food banks, food pantries. There is no vendor in
the Southwestern region, which is made up of seven states, that is providing protein into Texas. And so without CRE8AMEAL
being in our market right now, we have no protein to serve our families. And so again, it's devastating. - We were their protein provider, so now they're not getting any protein. - When Phase 1 ended for
us, as I heard 10 days ago, they have not received
one truck of protein from any other awardee. - And this is Dall
as. This is not like it's an underserved area. This is Dallas. CRE8AMEAL was something that was a good
benefit, we were supporting these families so we hope we can have it again. - In your written testimony
at the very least, you noted that a couple of
contracts have been terminated. And I suspect there are
tools in USDA's toolbox outside of termination that you're also able to
use to try to make sure that people are holding up
their end of the bargain. Is that right? - We've had numerous oversi
ght
activities on other contracts that were identified
as high-risk contracts or gained media attention to assure that those contracts were
being responsibly administered. - I think the most frustrating
part of the program, honestly, is we could've
done so much more. You know, this need is still
here in this community. It was a great, if I can call it, treat to be able to help those
families during this time. But boy, I would love to see more of it. I would really love to see more of it. - Over
to Othal, he was a great guy too. Speaking with him, he was just,
in my opinion, so educated on the process of-
- Extremely intelligent. - Very intelligent, on the
process of not only distribution and sourcing, but really
knowing the involvement to giving back to the community. - Yeah. - My name is Othal Brand. I am chairman of the board of trustees for Valley Baptist Mission Education. Valley Baptist was started in
1947 in Brownsville, Texas. And the area we serve is
basically South Texas regio
n, which is basically Willacy, Cameron, Starr, and Hidalgo County. Well, the Rio Grand Valley
region covers basically about 1.5 million people
in that four-county area. - He's so very well tied
down into the community of the Valley down here in South Texas that it makes it so much
easier when you have people that are not only tied into the community but that have the passion
to wanna give back. And that is one of the most
amazing things that Othal, as well as Santos over at Corpus Christi, or th
e Coastal Bend Food Bank
was able to really do for us and help us out with. - Meeting these people, shaking
hands, seeing what's needed, and just talking with
Santos there in Corpus and really seeing what he needed, I was so happy to take that
trip down, shake his hand, meet him, see the operation,
and go through all the food, which they were very excited to get. - The highlight was their
attention to the detail that we need to make
the distribution better. I think they did come out, I met with
Iverson and
always asking, "What's this?" I would give him my opinion,
you know, these boxes, and maybe if the pallets
were a little shorter, they could do this, and easier
for a volunteer to grab. So he was here twice every time, two times that we
received loads from them. And so he was very open
to the criticism we had about their product to just make it better so we can distribute
it a whole lot better. - There's many food banks
that worked very well with us in Oklahoma, in New Mexico,
in Uta
h, in Arizona, in Arkansas, in Louisiana,
in other parts of Texas, that worked really well with us. - [Emily] My name is Emily Slazer, and I am the food sourcing manager with Second Harvest Food
Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana. So after CRE8AMEAL approached us and offered us the opportunity
to receive boxes from them, they worked with me directly
to schedule deliveries on a timeframe that worked well for us, sending us products that we
really could make great use of, which was frozen co
oked chicken. Our clients really appreciate
that frozen protein so they can have it on hand. They don't have to eat it all at once. - Second Harvest down there,
I believe they are also a part of the Feeding America network. - Emily, right?
- Emily. Yeah, she's great. She did not stop. She was relentless. She did not stop. She's like, "Whatever we can get, whatever we can get, we'll take, you know? We're happy to take it
wherever we can get it. You know, we would be appreciative
of whatever we ca
n get." And that's the only promise
I was able to make her. I will do everything I can
to get something down there. And we were, luckily, able to succeed on that promise that I made her, that we would try as hard as we could. - [Emily] It's great for families. There are, unfortunately,
a lot of children facing hunger in Louisiana,
so for those families that have kids, especially,
not having to worry about where that school
lunch would have come from, this is another way
that we could help them o
ffset the impact of COVID-19. - There's many food banks that
don't look at the politics, and they don't look at the media. They do what they set out to do. They do what their passion and
their heart tells them to do, which is give out food. - My name's Jeff Quick, and I'm the CEO for the Food
Bank of North Central Arkansas. We are in Norfork, Arkansas,
and we currently serve, the Food Bank of North Central
Arkansas serves nine counties across our region, right
across the Missouri border. - So th
e food bank up there
in North Central Arkansas, Jeff was a very integral part
of helping us serve Arkansas and that whole northern part of Arkansas. - Sure. - Thankfully, Bill gave me a
call from CRE8AMEAL and said, "Hey, would you like
to be a part of this?" And I said, "Absolutely." We had been kind of working
with a sister food bank out of Jonesboro, Arkansas. And Bill called and said, "Hey, would you be willing
to do this as well?" And so we quickly made arrangements to begin receiving those
shipments. It was really great,
because even this morning, I had two of our agency partners call. And they were talking
about some other things. But ultimately, they, during
our conversation, said, "Wow, when did we get some
more of those farm boxes?" Because we could hand
the box to a local pantry where they were delivering them directly to those individuals in need. But us at the food bank and at our local pantries
weren't having to rebox anything. The boxes came with the
apples, the oranges,
the potatoes, the
cucumbers, whatever it is that the family needed,
all packed and ready to go. Made it very easy for us
to move a lot of this. - One of the benefits of being
a part of Feeding America as well as our statewide
hunger relief organizations is that all the food banks are able to kind of come together,
share information. We were able to share
information about the vendors who had been approved for this program. We could contact those vendors on behalf of our own food bank as well
as
our statewide food banks. There may be food banks
over in a neighboring state that had an existing relationship
with one of the vendors. So those food banks were
contacting us and saying, "Hey, we've got a vendor here, and they're trying to get their food out. Would you be, you know,
interested in working with them?" So it was really a two-way street as far as the communication. It really worked well. - CRE8AMEAL, you know, called
us and kind of, you know, asked us what we could handle,
and the
y sent us a few loads, and it was really great
pre-packed, you know, chicken. And you know, I did get calls, you know, "Can we get more of the meat boxes? Do you have any meat boxes this week?" So it was really great product. I got good feedback on it
and would like to have more. - It allowed us to move
a lot of product to them. And it allowed them to get
product out to the people who needed it the most. - It's not just about CRE8AD8. And that's what I felt was, you know, the mission of this org
anization, was, yes, feed families, but you know, how many more people can we
impact that we're not feeding, but we're providing jobs,
you know, to our vendors, to the truckers, you know? So it was more than anyone
could just put in a small box or just talk about in an interview. So there's just so many other
dominoes that got affected. - But I am glad, after the project, one thing that we did I
thought was a great idea is to bring on that statistician. It really shows the firm numbers, the firm
, firm numbers
of what was executed through the management team that we had. And this will completely back
up the project, the people, the talent, and the
deliverables on what was done. - (clears throat) I just think it'd
be good for us to say thank you to CRE8AMEAL and the other organizations that have partnered with us. When I say us, I mean
all of the food banks across the nation. We really depend on partnerships. And Bill and the team
at CRE8AMEAL stepping up and initiating contact with
us a
nd making this happen for the people we serve,
that's what it's all about. We so appreciate the time
and the effort that CRE8AMEAL and others have put into this project. - 'Cause we had issues with the dairy, that's really the biggest thing that people would like
to either talk about on a negative level, but
it's also the biggest thing that the USDA spoke about at
the congressional hearings. - So first of all, to
maybe address your question about dairy, you know, that is probably, if we looked a
t the categories of boxes, that would be the category of
boxes that least fulfilled. - [Chair] Are we looking to address that in the second round? - And part of that, though, isn't necessarily that they failed to execute their contracts. Part of it is, is the marketplace changed. The price of milk and cheese changed. And the retail industry
pulled those products out of where they were
accessible to our contractors. - And I thought it was very interesting how that was the very
first moment we fou
nd out. We weren't the only ones. We knew there was a couple others like us that were having dairy issues. But when we found out that
it was across the board, that it was many more
awardees that had issues with the dairy, especially
people that had been around for decades in the food industry, and they still couldn't get their hands on the dairy that they needed, I felt extremely confident that what we did was really the best that we could've done under the situation. - All of the milk that we
u
sed and sent to CRE8AMEAL, there was no home for it. We sent 100% of our... Everything that they bought was our excess for that time period. Talk about milk that would
have been dumped and wasted if it had not been for
CRE8AMEAL, without a doubt. - As I look back and
think about this contract, I think about where
they started at CRE8AD8 and where they ended up at the end. - Thank you, CRE8AD8.
- [All] Thanks, CRE8AD8. (workers chattering) - It was kind of amazing
that a little company- - That is
the most reasonable one that can meet all our demand. - Under constant attack from the press could be this successful. - I think that a lot of companies and the USDA is gonna look at
our model that we developed and say, "Why can't it work
like that for everybody?" - It's amazing, and it goes
to show a lot of the fortitude and the character of
the principles behind it to be able to pull
something like this off. And you know what I'm
really excited about? I'm excited about what
they're gonna do n
ext. - Communities are still hungry. People are still unemployed. There's still food out there that maybe needs to be
distributed to those people. So for us, and our particular
contract may be coming to an end, but the need will continue. And would've been nice to
continue that with them. - I'm excited about the
next phase of this program or where they're gonna
take their company next, because when someone
can be this successful from a floor of almost
nothing in this industry, to deliver as much
food to
needy families as they did, they've got something
else coming big next. I can't wait to see what it is. (hopeful music)
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