The 'Greening' of Con Artistry

The Toronto Star reports on an unappetizing "green" scam:

A Toronto catering company that claims to have fed one million of the “highest-quality” meals to Ontario children is a fly-by-night operation working out of a fast-food restaurant and passing off conventional or poorly cooked food as premium fare.

Whole Green Kids, which caters to preschool child-care centres and Montessori schools in the GTA and Ottawa, promising locally grown, organic, as well as kosher and halal meals, delivers virtually none of the above, a Star investigation has found.

Former employees and suppliers describe a company in chaos — buying no-name foods at discount groceries and skimping on both quality and portions.

The three-year-old firm is run by Susan Blouin, a gregarious, smooth-talking entrepreneur who, despite declaring bankruptcy four years ago owing $430,000, lives in a rented $2.2 million Georgian home in Thorncrest Village and drives a Porsche Cayenne SUV.

Blouin told the Star her company is an “awful mess” and she blames a “mutiny by staff” for the problems. She is trying to make improvements.

At one time, Whole Green Kids catered to 75 schools in Toronto and Ottawa. Today it is a nomadic company cooking out of the basement of a banquet hall and a sports bar, on the run from creditors, its business unravelling as employees quit and one daycare centre after another cancels its contract.

Evicted from three different kitchens in the past six weeks for nonpayment of rent, Whole Green Kids is temporarily serving up daycare lunches out of a rented kitchen at Burrito Burrito Mexican restaurant on Highway 7 in Vaughan...

That doesn't sound very wholesome (or kosher). Just goes to show what you can get away with (at least for a while) if you stick the word "green" on it.