We Fed an Island

by Jose Andres

  I noticed a group of five women drinking beers at one of the tables and asked them where they were from. By chance, it turned out they were school cooks who had finished work already. They had cooked food not just for their students, but also seven hundred meals for their local community. It was yet another sign that the school feeding plan was working.

  Along with the reopening of Maelo’s, it looked like Puerto Rico’s food recovery was developing quickly. This was no longer the crisis of a month ago, and we would have to adapt too. Maybe we could funnel FEMA money to local restaurants to help reach the areas of need. We could coordinate with local mayors and the local restaurants to feed the island and revive the economy at the same time. But first, we had to figure out what those areas of need really looked like.

  We loaded up the back of the Jeep with tray after tray of delicious roast chicken, along with piles of rice and beans. The air inside was filled with the aroma of this most delicious chicken, and it was hard not to eat it as we drove back to the river. I don’t think there has ever been a Homeland Security truck that smelled so good. The total cost for these five hundred chicken meals was $1,130, which came out to just $2.26 per person. It was a great model for how we could move forward, if FEMA were open to thinking in a new way about expanding our reach across the island.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that we couldn’t reach the military Humvees. The satellite phone didn’t work, or the team didn’t pick up the call. We drove to the water treatment plant, but there wasn’t any sign of them. We had no choice: we would take the chicken across the river ourselves. Only this time, I was determined to make it all the way across.

  We started edging out into the middle of the river. To begin with, the footing was slippery but held, and the water was fast but low. As we got closer to the middle, the ground became rocky: the concrete ford had broken and it was hard to keep our balance. The water suddenly grew deep and turbulent, and we struggled not to get swept into the river. Some of the villagers met us halfway across and seemed to find the crossing much easier than we did. Perhaps it was all their practice over the last few weeks. They looked like they were walking on water to feed the hungry, like a modern-day Jesus.

  On my third run, carrying a tray of hot rice, my foot hit a rock and I fell hard. My instincts kicked in and I held the rice above my head. Nothing would stop the food getting through, even if it meant that my knee took the full force of my stumble. I was soaked, and my knee felt like something had cracked. But the rice was still hot and good to eat. My two satellite phones did not survive the fall as well as the food. At least I had a third phone back in San Juan with Erin or Nate.

  We carried on until all the trays of chicken and rice were on the other side of the river, where some locals met us in their pickup trucks to take us to the center of the village. “We’re an island within the island,” one of them told me. “We’re surrounded by water.”

  There were few signs of cleanup in San Lorenzo. Houses that had collapsed in the hurricane simply lay where they fell. There was no sign of a working economy, and the villagers were happy to see us. One of the older men told me they had already distributed our earlier delivery of food, first to the elderly and then to the sick. Only this final round would go to younger, healthy people. People on the mainland liked to think of Puerto Ricans—especially those living in poor, rural parts of the island—as corrupt or criminal. But these people in San Lorenzo put their community first; they took care of the weakest before they looked after themselves.

  “We have food already,” said one of the men. “We have supplies. What we need are generators to keep ice cold. Can you get us one?”

  At that point I knew we had reached something far more important than the other side of a treacherous river crossing. We had reached the point where the island was beginning to stand on its own, at least in terms of food and water. Life was far from normal here. But if San Lorenzo—supposedly the hardest-hit village in the area—was fine for food, then we could start planning to wind down our food relief. We could keep a few kitchens open to concentrate on places that needed the most help, but we didn’t need to keep going at maximum volume for much longer. If we stayed too big for too long, we would crowd out all those small restaurants like Maelo’s just at the point when they were trying to get back into business. And if we closed down too soon, we would be neglecting the people who still lived in terrible conditions, and still needed food relief in an economy that was struggling to recover without power and water.

  On our way back to the river, we ran into the military Humvees again. They had arrived ahead of us, and moved on to another repair mission, before returning to see if they could track us down. We were only too happy to take their Humvees back across the river. They gunned over the potholes and we bounced across in less than a minute.

  The next day we hit our all-time record for meals produced: 145,637 in a single day, from 16 kitchens, taking our total count to more than 1.5 million meals. Looking back at where we began, less than a month earlier, it was an amazing achievement. But it was now time to think about how we could shrink.

  BEFORE MAKING ANY FINAL DECISIONS, I WANTED TO CHECK OUT THE most remote parts of our operation: the islands off the big island. I took another puddle-jumper from San Juan for the short flight to the small island of Culebra, which is actually closer to St. Thomas than to the main island of Puerto Rico. It looks like a Caribbean tourist paradise, with white beaches and palm trees, and it has a small airstrip that sits between steep hills. If it weren’t for the fact that the U.S. Navy used it for bombing practice until 1975, Culebra might have been a household name. Instead, even in Puerto Rico, this seven-mile-wide island is easily overlooked.

  A couple of staff were cleaning and running the car rental desk inside the tiny airport terminal. What they told me came as a surprise: the island had recovered more than the mainland, and preferred to be overlooked. They had power for the workday, from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., although there were clearly no tourists to look after. There were more Jeeps for rent here than I had ever seen at San Juan’s airport, so I paid for one and drove into town.

  I found the government building easily: it had a dozen volunteers outside, handing out supplies to a handful of people who stopped for them. There were pallets of bottled water, and boxes upon boxes of MREs. Some of the military meals came from South Carolina; others from Ohio. There were boxes of crackers and potted meat from Georgia. A month after Maria, people were still handing out this plastic-wrapped version of manufactured food. No wonder there were few takers.

  Our hot meals were coming by boat to the small jetty in front of the government center. As soon as the aluminum trays of rice and chicken started coming ashore, one of the volunteers shouted, “No more rations! Now we have real meals!” On board were my own volunteers, from Dame Un Bite, a Puerto Rican version of Seamless or GrubHub run by José Ortiz, which translates from Spanglish as Give Me a Bite. The red-shirted young volunteers were tireless in delivering up and down the stairs of apartment buildings with no power and no working elevators. They manned the front desk at El Choli, where the food orders came in, and here they were again, in this farthest corner of Puerto Rico. Just the sight of their shirts filled me with hope. They helped us serve sandwiches and plates of chicken and rice to the islanders, as someone nearby played “Despacito” on a portable speaker.

  We returned to the airport and flew on to Vieques, where I wanted to see how life had moved on in the last two weeks. We drove down south to the Bili beach restaurant, where we cooked our food for the island and checked on their supplies. But what caught my eye was the restaurant next door, called Bananas, where the owner Kelly Soukup was reopening that day.

  “We’re losing money but we have to open for the staff and everybody else,” she told me. “We’re here for whoever is here. It is what it is. You can’t just sit around at your house with no power, right? We’re hoping people will come.”

  I loved her spirit and what it sai
d about the recovery of restaurants and Puerto Rico. I gave her some cash to help her through, because we both knew there were no tourists to help her business. Not yet. “Buy whatever you need,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” she said. “Because I want to cry. No one has done that for me. We usually give, give, give.”

  In these moments I understood why Mercy Corps was doing the right thing. Every time I gave money, it seemed like the smart thing to do. Especially when you know the people and how they are going to use the money. It means a lot to a small business owner to get a small infusion of cash.

  We drove back to Isabel Segunda to explore the food economy of the main town. There were more signs of life, in the middle of so many challenges. I noticed that a small pizzeria, called Mama Mia, was open for business so I went inside. The place was half full of customers and entirely full of conversation. There was food coming out of the kitchen even though they had no water. It wasn’t exactly the healthiest conditions for cooking, but with pizza you can improvise more easily than with other types of food.

  All these small details sent me one clear signal: it was time to wind down our operations. Our FEMA contract, signed just a few days ago, would only run for another few days. There was no sign of a third contract coming. Our last day at the arena was just a couple of days away, and the company managing the space was constantly asking for more money, with little notice, as it tried to make up for the collapse of its normal business. I didn’t want to close down completely; Puerto Rico certainly was not ready for that. Without ongoing FEMA funding, we still needed to find where the communities of greatest need were.

  As we prepared to leave El Choli, we notched up some record numbers that demonstrated what we were capable of, and pointed to what we could have done if there had been a real partnership with FEMA and the large nonprofits: we produced more than 146,000 meals a day for our last two days at the arena, crossing the total of 2 million meals on the day before we left. It was a heroic performance: in a single day we surpassed our entire cooking and sandwich preparation in our first ten days of food relief. The only disappointment came from FEMA itself. On the same day, they sent us an email to cease all production once the contract was fulfilled. “Our Mass Care unit has no further need and decided to cancel any further production/distribution of meal services,” they wrote.

  Either FEMA was still stunningly clueless about the needs of the island, or they had lined up another mass producer of meals and sandwiches. Perhaps the most likely explanation was a bit of both. In any case, they didn’t want to work with us anymore.

  Our 2 million meals compared pretty well to the grand total of inedible MREs distributed by the U.S. military: 9 million plastic packets of what was once food.3 Taking together all the military supplies of MREs, including another 3 million sent to FEMA, that represented just two days of what FEMA thought the island needed to eat. If you’re even more generous, and include the “shelf stable meals,” otherwise known as cans, the U.S. military—with its vast budget and huge transport capabilities—supplied the island with around fourteen days of food. I suspected that most of those MREs were never distributed to people, but were actually getting stored in giant warehouses. Somewhere on the island is a massive stockpile, like the scene at the end of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.

  On our last day at El Choli, I huddled with my food truck team and hugged them to say thank you. I gathered my cooks at the paella pans for one last song:

  Voy subiendo, voy bajando: I go up, I go down.

  Voy subiendo, voy bajando: I go up, I go down.

  Tu vives como yo vivo, yo vivo cocinando: You live like me, I live by cooking.

  Tu vives como yo vivo, yo vivo cocinando: You live like me, I live by cooking.

  OUR NEW HEADQUARTERS WAS CLOSE TO THE SAN JUAN AIRPORT, AT THE Vivo Beach Club: a resort by the sea that was going to be closed for many months. But while its rooms and landscaping needed repairs, its huge kitchen was in great condition. We set up a new sandwich line in an empty conference room, taking care not to slop mayo on the carpeted floor. Outside my cooks could take a break gazing out to sea—or at the empty beach café. It didn’t take long for us to get back to preparing thousands of meals a day.

  We continued to get amazing public support. Lin-Manuel Miranda stopped by to see our kitchen and to thank everyone. He had already recorded a great song, “Almost Like Praying,” to raise money for hurricane relief. The song featured the magical Taíno names of many of the island’s municipalities, and was performed by Latino superstars including Jennifer Lopez, Gloria Estefan and Luis Fonsi. He called the song “a love letter to Puerto Rico” and warned against the compassion fatigue that made people ignore the suffering on the island.

  In media interviews, Miranda acknowledged the historic parallel with his biggest hit: Hamilton himself appealed for outside help after a hurricane devastated the island of St. Croix in August 1772, not far from Puerto Rico.4 Lin-Manuel’s visit lifted the team’s spirits, and he called our work “really inspiring”—which was really inspiring for all of us too. As he raised money for us with a Facebook campaign, he was happy to join with Erin, my chief of operations, as she rapped her way through the opening of his musical In The Heights. It was a dream come true for Erin and I was happy for her.

  His visit was the kind of thing we held on to while others were less than supportive. Even though our formal relationship with them was over at the end of our contract, FEMA continued with its low-level sniping at me and our food relief operation. It was a petty dispute that spoke volumes about their attitudes and decision making in the middle of the biggest humanitarian crisis in the U.S. in living memory. A reporter at BuzzFeed asked FEMA about the end of our relationship, and Marty Bahamonde, who had been helpful to me on the phone, was dismissive of our work, portraying our food relief as some kind of marketing campaign for my restaurants.

  He described me as a “colorful guy who gets a lot of exposure” and “a businessman looking for stuff to promote his business.”

  I won’t lie. This kind of attack hurt me because it smeared the reputation of all the Chefs For Puerto Rico. The island was always prone to cynical rumors of corruption and FEMA was intentionally stirring them up. Why resort to such a deceitful caricature?

  “He was very critical of us publicly and we were disappointed that he took that approach,” Bahamonde told BuzzFeed. “We had a good working relationship, and we paid him a lot of money to do that work. It wasn’t volunteer work—so we were disappointed in some of his public comments.”5

  But this explanation was also deceitful. FEMA didn’t pay me a lot of money to work. They paid a lot of money to a nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, to reimburse us for the massive costs of producing millions of meals for Puerto Ricans. I wasn’t paid a dime for my work, and my businesses were never compensated for my time or for the work of any of my chefs and executives who helped in Puerto Rico.

  So what was riling them up, after they had split with us? And were those feelings the cause of the split in the first place?

  The BuzzFeed comments were revenge for an article in Time magazine a month earlier, at the height of our dispute over the second contract, when FEMA had said there would be no further work and we would have to shut down early.

  “People are hungry today. FEMA should be in the business of taking care of Americans in this minute,” I told Time. “The American government has failed.”6

  Even with the distance of time, I stand by those comments today. There was no real sense of urgency at FEMA or inside the Trump administration. They failed to take adequate care of American citizens struggling without food and water. I explained to Time that my first FEMA contract—for just twenty thousand meals a day for one week—was nowhere near enough for the island, or for us to cover our costs. “FEMA used me as a puppet to show that they were doing something,” I told the magazine.

  Perhaps I should have been more diplomatic in my public comments. But the situation was urgent and my public
pressure seemed to be the only thing that was breaking through the government bureaucracy and the boredom of the media. Who else was going to speak up for the American citizens of Puerto Rico, and how else were they going to eat something other than plastic MREs for weeks on end?

  FEMA admitted to BuzzFeed that bureaucratic red tape was at the heart of the problem. “The agency acknowledged that only his organization, World Central Kitchen, was able to offer hot meals on the island, but said FEMA could only offer Andrés short-term emergency contracts for two weeks at a time, not the longer-term contract he wanted because that would have to go through a competitive bid process due to federal procurement laws,” BuzzFeed wrote, quoting an official saying there “was a frustration on his part in what he viewed as bureaucracy getting in the way.”

  That is something we can agree on. I was frustrated with the red tape that meant there could be no contract for several weeks while the bidding process took place. An emergency is an emergency, and a long contract negotiation does nothing for people without food and water. But I was happy with two-week contracts and I was even happier to compete with anyone on price. I just wanted to feed the people.

  Besides, as we found out later, FEMA was writing huge contracts for people with no experience, no capacity to deliver meals and a track record of failure. Their arguments, like the comments to BuzzFeed, seemed more about personal pride and internal politics than anything else.

  I texted Bahamonde and FEMA’s tone changed. The next day they told the local newspapers that we had done a great job. I never knew if that bad story was the product of the press or the people of FEMA. Sometimes I wondered if we should stop talking to the media. But we would not have been taken so seriously without them.

  At this point, FEMA itself had gone into the sandwich business, buying and distributing up to 100,000 sandwiches a day from the airline caterers. They told our friends at Homeland Security to stop supporting us, a demand our friends ignored, according to HSI agents who told me directly. FEMA had managed to ramp up just at the point where everyone needed to ramp down because the island was recovering enough on its own. By the time they managed to copy part of our food relief operation, it was too late to flood Puerto Rico with free food. Instead it was time to be smart, nimble and focused, qualities that FEMA had struggled to figure out.