UPDATE: On November 29, the North Texas Food Bank received an $800 check from the organizers of Tomato Battle. More updated details are in Gubbins' article.
Back in October we told you about the Tomato Battle, a new event that featured people throwing old tomatoes at each other. Seemed like the sort of thing that was more fun in theory than in sticky practice, and there were complaints that the event would waste food. But the organizers had a way to shut people up: A portion of ticket sales for the Dallas event would go to a local food pantry, they said.
"Yes ma'am, we give a portion of all ticket sales to a local food bank. For Dallas, we are working with the North Texas Food Bank," Danielle Campoamor, Marketing Director and Sponsorship Coordinator at Tomato Battle LLC, told me on October 31.
Teresa Gubbins recently reported that the November 12 actually raised no money for charity.
Per Gubbin's interview with the NTFB:
"We didn't receive any money from them," said spokeswoman Kim Smith. "We wouldn't have even known about it if you hadn't brought it to my attention. But we probably wouldn't have given them our sanction, since we don't condone any waste of food."
Oops.
Tomato Battle LLC responded early Wednesday morning via email that they were, in fact, still planning on donating and more recently posted on their Facebook page that $800 was donated.
Giving these professional party planners the benefit of the doubt, let's hope they made good on their promise.
We'll verify with the NTFB asap.
