Officials for the San Diego Padres are staying silent about questionable nonprofits working concessions inside the park.
The Padres’ silence follows months of reporting by Voice of San Diego on charitable groups that run concession stands inside Petco. Last year, Voice revealed one group, pretending to be a charity that supported girls softball, had been raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars for years. Next, Voice found two other groups with questionable missions, paying people under the table and below minimum wage to work booths, while pretending those people were volunteers.
Earlier this week, Voice revealed that a new group claiming to help college students sprung up soon after the fake softball charity shut down. The two men who started the new charity, Greek Life Aid, both previously worked for the bogus softball charity.
One of those men promised to provide receipts that proved the group was doing charitable work. He then stopped answering phone calls and never provided proof the group is actually helping college students.
The Padres contract with a multi-billion-dollar hospitality company called Delaware North to manage concessions in Petco. Delaware North officials promised to tighten up their verification procedures after Voice’s initial story last year.
We asked Padres’ officials whether they have full confidence in Delaware North to root out fraud and impropriety within the volunteer concessions program at Petco on Monday. They refused to answer any questions.
The Padres employ Delaware North to run concession stands throughout Petco Park. Some of those stands are worked by Delaware North employees. Others are staffed by charities. Delaware North gives the charities roughly 10 percent of their stands’ revenue, in exchange for the service. The money is supposed to go to the charities.
Baseball teams like the Padres usually receive about 50 percent of concessions’ revenue, as part of their contracts with concessionaires like Delaware North. Concessionaires take in the rest of the revenue, from which they pay their employees or dole out donations to charity groups that provide labor.
